Pastors Hold Peaceful Protest Over Continued Closure Of Church By Abia Govt

Pastors of the Apostolic Christian Church Mission (ACCM) Incorporated, Nigeria numbering over 100 on Thursday held a peaceful protest in Aba, the commercial nerve of the state.

The pastors who started protesting from the Osisioma junction of the Enugu-Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway through Aba- Owerri said that the protest was their last resort after attempts to get the governor to unseal the national headquarters of their church in Aba failed.

The protesters bearing placards with inscriptions like “Let the governor unseal our church”, “Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu should open our national headquarters”, ” ACC Mission doesn’t support tribalism” and among others said that the sealing of their national headquarters accused some highly placed individuals close to the state government of hijacking the leadership structure of the church for their selfish interests, causing the church to be factionalized, an act they said has never been witnessed in the over 72 years existence of the church.

In an interview, Christopher Ogbuagu, spokesperson of Apostles of the church said “There is a tiny minority of the church elders mostly politicians who incidentally are relatives of the Governor of Abia State ; His Excellency Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, who want, to foist an unpopular Bishop over the church due to the death of the former Bishop and also two other senior Apostles who were next in line.

“The matter is even before the court of Appeal Owerri Division, and rather than the other group to be patient and law abiding and await the verdict of the court of Appeal they have resorted to all means possible to arm twist the church and their latest move was to get the Governor to shut down the church headquarters; to put fear into the members who against their choice.

“We want to inform the world that should any harm come to any of leaders that the governor should be held responsible.”

Also speaking on the behalf of ordained pastors of the church, Reverend Ugochukwu Onugha, a senior pastor of the church said “The governor of the state for the past one month sealed our national headquarters at Omuma road.

“All our efforts to see the governor has proved abortive because he has his brothers who formulated all kinds of lies against us, our church and our Bishop.

“We have been able to reach out to the former Deputy Governor of Abia State and in-law to the governor of the state, His Excellency, Rt. Hon. Eric Acho Nwakanma, the Chief of Staff to the governor, Chief Okey Ahiwe and other political stakeholders that we were able to reach to persuade the governor to unseal our national headquarters, but all our efforts proved abortive. There is nothing else that we can do than to carry out this protest so that the world will hear us.

“The governor is not a member of our church. He is the governor of the state and a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. We don’t know the interest of the governor in our church.

“We are law-abiding citizens of the state. We don’t want to cause problem or confusion in his peaceful state, all we are soliciting is for him to unseal our national headquarters so that we can go and worship God in truth and in Spirit.

“The sealing of the church has caused a lot of damages to the church. We have lost many members and we are losing members every day.

“Ministers no longer have a place to gather and pray to seek the face of God and even commit the same state into the hands of God.It has caused a lot damages to the church.”

Speaking on the crisis that led to the sealing of the church by the government, Rev. Onugha said that it was what the ministers could have resolved amongst themselves, but however regretted that some “political” elders of the church hijacked the situation for their selfish interest.

“We only went to court to challenge the politicians when they hijacked the situation in the church. They have all the political powers and there is nothing else we can do than to go to court to seek redress.

“The case is still in Appeal Court, they don’t want the law to take its course, that is why they took laws into their hands.”

Our correspondent reports that attempts by a team of police officers from Osisioma Police Division to stop the protest failed as the protesters held their grounds that what they were doing were within their fundamental rights.