The church, which was founded by the late Jeremiah Achi, who passed on
two years ago, had the culture of swapping spouses for the church
members in the name of getting them hooked to their God-given partner
and wrapping it up with a Mercedes Benz car.
Investigations by New Telegraph revealed that the criteria for getting a
brand new Mercedes Benz car is when a male member of the church is
picked for the husband swap…
Though the swap is neither compulsory nor
forced on members, it is said that it comes in form of vision by the
general overseer, who died two years ago. Through a vision, a
dedicated male member of the church may be seen not to be marrying his
God-given wife, hence, another wife is picked for the man from the
church to marry as the real life partner whether both are married with
children or not.
The practice, it was gathered, had been going on for years with men
leaving their already established homes to remarry other women with
children. But the spicy meal laced with a Mercedes Benz car gift became
sour when a man in the church was asked to leave his wife, who a vision
revealed was not his nature-ordained wife, to marry another woman with
four children while the woman’s husband was swapped to marry the man’s
wife.
The said man got to his new home only to face rejection from the grown
up children of the woman who were already in secondary school. On
arrival, he got a very numb reception and in the following weeks, the
children refused to either greet him or call him daddy, despite their
mother’s explanations and admonitions; even neighbours began to ask the
children about their father’s whereabouts and who the man they see with
their mother was.
After a while of enduring the pain of rejection and with all the new
wife’s vain effort to get them to accept the man as their father, the
man got fed up and decided it was time to leave and return to his
family.
He left the new family and returned to his home and told the man living with his wife to leave his home, but the man refused.
So, he was forced to go back to his pastor, who pacified him and told him that he will resolve the matter.
But the man, who was apparently livid, already had his mind made up on
returning back to his home and stormed out of the church in anger. That
was the way the man left the church and chased away the man living in
his home to return to his own wife.
Not long after the scenario, the general overseer of the church passed
away. After his demise and burial, the church continued with its
doctrine for a while before shifting base to another location close to
the old one led by one of the assistant pastors.
According to a choir member of the church, who at first meeting didn’t
want to talk to New Telegraph, the story of Mercedes and wife swap were
all lies.
She said that the late general overseer was only doing certain things to
help the members. She alluded to the fact that the help included the
gift of a car and a wife. “The car is given to help the couple start
their life,” she said.
She denied that the church does wife swap, but sometimes “The late
general overseer may see someone in a vision and tell the person that
the woman he is married to is not his God-ordained wife. “I don’t think
there is anything wrong with obeying an instruction from a man of God
because God speaks through him,” she said.
After several weeks of tracking the new pastor for an interview failed,
the reporter took to adorning a head to toe white regalia in order to
enter the church and that way, the pastor, Mr. Emmanuel Ikealor, who
severally said he does not speak to journalists, opened up and simply
said: “Yes, our daddy used to give a Mercedes Benz car to members of the
church who are poor and when he sees in a vision that you are not
married to your heaven ordained life partner, he will unite you with
your true partner and do the same with the person swapped. Those that
did it then have no regrets till today.
“I don’t know why people derive joy in saying what they know nothing
about. These things are very spiritual. Even though, I was not married
then, it was daddy that picked my wife for me and I am at peace with
her.
“A spiritual man sees beyond the physical. That is what people do not
understand.” On how the money for the car gifts was sourced, he said: “I
cannot answer that.” It was, however, observed that the church which
has white as its uniform for services, holds service three times a week
while Sunday services last from 8a.m. to 5p.m.
It was also observed that most members who have cars drive Mercedes Benz.
According to an elderly man, Chief Kanayo Nwafor, whose house is close
to the church, the “Uka Achi/Mercedes church” has been in existence in
Abagana for as long as over six years, but was not popular until the man
who founded the church started giving out cars. Nwafor said that the
man, before he died, used to be a native doctor for a long time before
he claimed he had become a born again and opened a church.
“People then started calling it uka Mercedes (Mercedes church) because
they gave out Mercedes cars to the people they swap for marriage. “I
don’t have the right to judge anybody.
Only God has the right. But I wonder how somebody will ask me to leave
the wife I have married to go and marry someone else’s wife even if she
already has grown up children.
It’s absurd.” Investigations showed that the husband/wife swap is still
being practised in the new church in line with the principles of the
late founder and for the pastor; there is nothing wrong with it.
He asked: “If you are married to a queen of the coast, who has only come
into your life to torment you and a man of God has his eyes opened to
save you from that decay, would you decline?” Efforts to speak to a
member of the church whose wife was swapped failed as he declined to
answer the questions put to him.