The money we gave Bose was for empowerment, not miracle – pastor says

A cleric mentioned in a recent controversial miracle, Pastor Chris Okafor, has said that the money he gave the 40-year-old woman, Bose Olasunkanmi, at the centre of the controversy was merely to empower her.

News about Olasunkanmi, who was alleged to have been paid huge sums of money by several churches, including Okafor’s Grace Nation Church (Liberation City) to perform fake miracles, had gone viral on the social media, prompting the police to arrest her.

But Okafor, speaking through his lawyer, Monday Ubani, told journalists yesterday that he and his church were never involved in any fake miracle.

The cleric said the church only offered to assist Olasunkanmi when it “discovered through some videos that the lady in the video has been using her fractured hand to deceive people.”

He said, “The recent story in a national daily and some online platforms that the sum of N400,000 was paid to  the woman to fake miracle is not true.

“The lady in question came to our church like any other person who came for God’s miracles, and said the programme through which she was healed was shown on live television. There was nothing to hide because it was not only the woman that was healed. So there was no issue of arranging any miracle with anybody.”

Ubani, on behalf of Okafor, said that it was much later that the church discovered that the woman had been going from one church to another extorting money from them.

The lawyer said, “My client sent his ministers to look for the woman to ask why she was deceiving pastors. When she was asked why, she said it’s poverty that caused it because she is a widow. Upon hearing that, the man of God gave her the sum of N400,000 to empower her instead of her going from one church to another. The money given to her was not to procure fake miracle but to empower her to stop going from one church to another.

“After her visit to the church, there has not been any report that she went to any other church. Liberation City Church was the one she visited last. And she also confirmed that she received her miracle there. We did not have any reason to doubt her.

“There is no iota of truth in the story that has been going round about the miracle. All the stories that have been written are one-sided because no one asked from the church. My client is innocent.”