Nigeria Pastor Reacts As UK Court Closes Church

Nigerian-born Pastor Tobi Adegboyega has reacted to closure of his London-based church group, Salvation Proclaimer Ministries Limited by the court.

A United Kingdom court held that it failed “to properly account for more than £1.87 million of outgoings and operating with a lack of transparency.”

The wound-up of the group was announced on Friday on the UK Government’s website.

The statement reads in part,: “Salvation Proclaimer Ministries Limited, more commonly known as SPAC Nation, was wound up in the public interest in the High Court on 9 June 2022 before Judge Burton.

“The Official Receiver has been appointed as liquidator of the company.

“The court heard that SPAC Nation was incorporated in 2012, a charity set up to advance Christianity. Much of its charitable work was based in London, working particularly with vulnerable people, youth, and offenders.

“Initially, the church group received positive reviews and media attention. But by late 2019 SPAC Nation was subject to media scrutiny following allegations by former church members they had been financially exploited by senior church personnel.

“Further enquiries found that SPAC Nation either failed to comply or only partially complied with statutory requirements, including providing data to support claimed donations, and accounting records in support of £1.87 million of expenditure.”

The court held that the “company’s financial statements in the two years to 31 December 2019 set out £610,000 of rent expenditure. However, the company did not have a single base of its own and would hire venues across London to hold services, at significant expense.”

Reacting in a live interview with media personality, Daddy Freeze, Tobi said that the company has been discarded by his church for a while.

He alleged that his church does not receive tithe and offering and cannot be forced to make financial declarations.

He said: “ Today, a company or on the 7th of June, I’m looking for the right English, was closed and that company is called Salvation Proclaimers Limited , now, this is a limited company that we don’t want to use anymore.

“It’s a limited company, we don’t want to use it, we shouldn’t be using it.

“I said I don’t want, they said we should declare XYZ, I said no, fold that company, it makes no sense. Either you want to call it UK law or common sense law. We don’t want to use that company, it’s as simple as that.”

He argued that when a church registers in the UK, the major reason they have charity registration is that when people give offering or tithe, “they will go back and take 20p on every pound.”

“However, in our own case, we don’t take tithes or offering, we are not entitled to that, we don’t claim it. So the whole charity registration is useless to us, it doesn’t help us,” he said.