30th June, 2019
Thousands of members of Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA) headquarters in Abuja resoundingly celebrated their embattled Senior Pastor, Biodun Fatoyinbo, this morning when he appeared on the podium, despite the rape allegation hanging on his neck.
Celebrity photographer, Bukola Dakolo had during the week accused Fatoyinbo of raping her when she was 16 years old in her Ilorin, Kwara State, home.
Fatoyinbo has since denied the allegation, describing it as an attempt to extort the church.
The Nation reports that thousands of COZA members who attended today’s service gave a standing ovation to their senior pastor when he appeared on stage.
After the rapturous ovation that greeted his appearance Pastor Fatoyinbo said: “I have the most blessed church, if I am not heading it, I’ll be glad to be a member.”
With carefully orchestrated moves at the brief worship service, Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo cancelled the ‘Seven Days of Glory’s fasting and prayer programme of the church scheduled to run through the first week of July. He explained that he won’t like to put invited guests through the sort of thing that was happening outside’.
Protesters massed about half a kilometre from the church from 8 am till after congregants departed while armed policemen, DSS, NSCDC and a few masked men in black and others with Strike Force inscribed on their jackets surrounded the church.
The church service began with songs of victory, with the choir singing: “I see it, I feel it, testimony’s all around, I’m in the middle of it” with loud support by congregants.
At 10.21am, Pastor Omodele Fatoyinbo walked up to the altar and was welcomed with a tumultuous shout of joy and clapping.
“Right in the middle of what God is doing, that is where we are!” she said, telling worshippers not to give any thought to the ‘enemy’.
“You better be sensitive, some will receive their testimony today,” an exquisitely dressed Pastor Omodele stated before leading the entire church in a recital of verses from 2 Samuel chapter 22, verses 1-7.
At exactly 10.34am, with an extremely rapturous welcome, Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo walked up to the altar, and spoke for six minutes, following which he blessed the church and twice moved to stop his wife from making further comments as the service ended.
Just before then, his wife said: “Not even as an unbeliever would my husband rape anyone”.
Earlier, several testimonies, including that of one Sodipo Jacob whose fees were miraculously paid at the University of Abuja, Alfred Mapeyo, who said he was miraculously healed after sweating out a disease after attending a COZA church service.
Then, as if in direct response to Busola Dakolo’s rape allegation against Pastor Fatoyinbo, eight women in their thirties, clad in tight jeans came one after another, to speak on the ‘COZA TESTIMONY’.
Using various perspectives, all of them narrated how the singular experience of starting to attend COZA between 2003 and 2013 marked a profound turnaround, catapulting them from obscurity to directorship of companies, ownership of businesses and having a great marital life.