By Emmanuel Ugwu in Umuahia and Christopher Isiguzo in Enugu
With the Supreme Court judgment which resolved the leadership crisis in the Assemblies of God (AG) Nigeria, the Executive Council of the Church has extended the deadline for the “rebels” to repent and return to the fold in order to seal the cracks and heal the wound caused by the rift.
The General Superintendent (GS) of the church, Rev Chidi Okoroafor, made this known yesterday in Umuahia, Abia State, in a chat with journalists, sued for peace, saying the deadline for the dissidents to repent and return to the church has now been extended to April 30, 2017.
He said the Executive Council decided to offer the dissidents “a generous olive branch” hence the extension of the deadline after the earlier one had expired on March 31, 2017.
The GS, who was on worship tour of Umuahia central district of AG, said the olive branch was extended to the dissidents in the spirit of no victor, no vanquished declared by the church leadership after the “unfortunate” legal tussle was resolved in its favour.
“We are not sadists; we gave generous olive branch to those that worked against the church,” he said, adding that the gesture was to enable those affected to repent and retrace their steps back to the church because “we’re interested in one Assemblies of God, not divided church”.
Assemblies of God church which has been in existence since 1934 became embroiled in leadership crisis when the former GS, Professor Paul Emeka went to court to challenge his suspension as leader of the church. He won at the high court in Enugu but lost at the Appeal Court and finally at the Supreme Court which on January 24, 2017, affirmed Emeka’s suspension.
However, Emeka and his supporters in their interpretation of the Supreme Court verdict, insisted that though his suspension was upheld, the verdict did not recognise the ascendance of Rev Okoroafor as the GS hence the “rebels” held on to the headquarters of the church in Enugu which they had been occupying since the factionalisation of AG.
But Okoroafor said the AG under his leadership has been very patient with the Emeka led –faction, which occupied the national secretariat of the church at Enugu even though, according to him, the faction constitutes just about three percent of AG membership.
Having successfully retrieved the national secretariat from the rebels, the AG said the option left for Emeka and his supporters was to accept the generous olive branch and submit to the recognised leadership of AG.
The GS explained that it was necessary to set a deadline for the dissidents to repent and come back to the church to enable the leadership know those that belong to the AG and those that continue to identify with the rebellious group.
He said that while the leadership crisis raged 97 percent of the AG membership and all institutions of the church “are under our control”, adding that the AG is not a one man show hence democratic principles and discipline would never be compromised in the administration of the church.
