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RCCG pastor arrested over N7.5m unpaid loan

By CHRIS ANUCHA

Thursday, April 29, 2010

A Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) pastor, Akin Obatusin, has been arrested and detained at the Special Fraud Unit (SFU), Milverton Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, over a loan of N7.5 million.

Daily Sun gathered that another RCCG pastor, Abimbola Oresegun, wrote a petition to SFU that led to the arrest.

His detention at the Special Fraud Unit was also confirmed by a senior police officer, who spoke to Daily Sun but wouldn’t want his name in print. Problem started when Pastor Obatusin, an Estate Agent, allegedly borrowed the sum of N7.5 million, from the complainant on August 2009, to execute a contract.

The condition attached to the loan was that the suspect would pay back, after one month with 8 per cent interest. Also, the duration of the loan was one month. Two days after collecting the N7.5 million, Obatusin approached Oresegun and requested for another N2 million loan, this time, for himself.

The cleric had told Oresegun he wanted to use the money to complete the construction of his parents’ building, located at Layori Soetan Street, Sawmill, Gbagada, Lagos. The suspect was said to have promised to pay back the money, with 5 percent interest per month, immediately tenants moved into the house. He was also expected to pay back in one month..

However, Oresegun started to smell a rat when his pastor -colleague failed to pay back at the expiration of the one month.

According to a source, when Oresegun approached Obatusin, he (Obatusin) begged him to allow him use the money for further business transactions, a request which Oresegun turned down. After he failed to convince him to allow him hold on to the money, the pastor, again promised to pay in September 2009, before the lender traveled to Toronto, Canada, for further studies. But he never did.

While in Canada, a couple of e-mails were exchanged between the two pastors, during which Obatusin promised to make the money available by the first week of December 2009, when he would have returned to Nigeria. It was gathered that he again extended it to January 4, 2010. Following many breach of his promises, Oresegun decided to take the matter to their senior pastors, through a letter dated March 18, 2010. In the letter, the lender narrated how he lent some money to Obatusin and how he failed to honour the gentleman agreement he entered into with him.

Oresegun sought the Senior Clerics’ intervention, to prevail on Obatusin, now a Church Administrator, to pay back the money he borrowed from him.

Also in the letter, he told his fellow pastors how the suspect had in a separate business deals, assisted his wife to refurbish a building, let it out and allegedly collected N3.6 million, but refused to remit the money to his wife. It was when his efforts to collect the money failed that Oresegun decided to report the matter to the Special Fraud Unit. At SFU.

The complainant narrated how he had known the suspect at RCCG, Maranatha Chapel, Gbagada, Lagos, since 1999, which his wife attended.

He explained that his trust in Obatusin was based on the fact that he (Obatusin) once assisted him to procure a land and Certificate of Occupancy (C of O). The complainant also attached copies of e-mails exchanges between two of them to the petition he sent to SFU. The e-mails also were made available to Daily Sun.