Holy scam: When chasing miracles cost citizens millions
September 12, 2026 12:35 am
File: Godwin
By Victor Ayeni
From prophets selling ‘miracle products’ and promising divine breakthroughs to Islamic clerics allegedly collecting millions for spiritual rites, Nigerians seeking solutions to their financial, health and personal troubles are increasingly falling victim to religious exploitation that has become a lucrative venture, VICTOR AYENI investigates
When Oluremi Sokoya (not her real name) indicated to members of her church in the middle of June 2023 that she was no longer returning to them, it sent shockwaves through the people who knew her.
Sokoya, an entrepreneur, had been a member of the church for more than a year and had been working as part of the protocol team for the pastor of the Pentecostal church in Ikorodu, Lagos.
According to the 28-year-old, she joined the church in January 2022 and was quickly noticed by the pastor, who was in his late 40s, because of the size of her tithes and offerings.
“He called me one service and said he noticed I gave well to the Lord and encouraged me to continue, saying that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. That was when it began.
“From that day on, he began checking up on me anytime I didn’t show up in church due to the nature of my work. He would come to my house since I lived very close to the church.
“From there, he started talking about church projects I could help with and testimonies of how God blessed someone after giving sacrificially. I started to contribute to these projects. If I didn’t, he would call my name at the altar and say I must drop some money,” Sokoya recounted.
Sitting at a restaurant in Ikeja, she exhibited some reluctance to go into details because of some people whom she believed could be eavesdropping.
As she walked this reporter to another place away from there, she sat down, adjusted herself and continued her story.
“This bald man who calls himself a pastor, whom I can never in my life respect, began to take advantage of my kindness. I was buying things for him and his family. I bought them groceries, expensive clothing and shoes. This pastor had complete control over my finances. I believe he hypnotised me.
“He would come to my place, complain about the church being in debt, take my debit card and buy things for himself and his family. At that time, I couldn’t even take my money to buy a new shoe for my father, but I would be buying clothes for this man. I won’t lie to you, I spent almost half a million on this man within months,” Sokoya said, with a scowl on her face.
Aside from the alleged financial misappropriation, the 28-year-old alleged that the cleric also inappropriately touched her and tried to sexually abuse her on several occasions.
“I still recall the first day it happened,” she told Saturday PUNCH. “I was at home when he sent me a message around 5 pm, telling me that he was hungry and I should come to the church office and get him some food.
“That wasn’t unusual because I was part of the protocol. But that day, when I asked if he would like to eat bread and egg, he replied that, yes, but he also wanted to ‘eat’ me. I laughed it off since he joked with me a lot.
“When I walked into his office that day with the food, he shut the door and windows, and the place was dark. He switched on his phone torchlight, held me and began touching my breasts. I had to lie that my father needed me urgently to escape his grip. It was later I realised that he was sleeping with other ladies, and I had to leave the church.”
Findings by Saturday PUNCH showed that the case, among others, was reported to the police in May 2023, and about N400,000 was refunded to Sokoya in instalments.
But even though she retrieved her money from the man, she noted that she could no longer continue going to church.
“I’ve stopped going to church since then. I can’t bring myself to the level of being exploited or scammed by any pastor again. I have had enough. I still overhear some of his sermons insulting those who left his church, that they will never prosper. I just laugh because nothing will make me return there,” Sokoya said.
‘He built his house on our dime’
Like Sokoya, the mere mention of a ‘prophet’ still leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of Mr and Mrs Udofia, an Ibadan-based couple, even after a decade.
In 2006, at a time when the family was going through what Sam and his wife, Mary, described as a spiritual crisis, they were introduced to one ‘Prophet Emmanuel’ by a family friend.
“I was raised Catholic, but I have always kept an open mind towards other Christian persuasions. My wife, on the other hand, is more of a Pentecostal type, so we were introduced to this prophet, who saw that I was being attacked by witches and said he was praying for us. We didn’t attend his church, but we believed in his calling.
“What even brought us more together is the fact that we are from the same state and town in Uyo, so his wife was also a friend to my wife, and he came here regularly. I lived in Lagos at the time while my wife lived in Ibadan, so I didn’t see the extent of control this prophet wielded over my family on time.
“He controlled all our lives: who we talked to, who visited us, where we went and even disciplined our children for us. He made us see enemies everywhere. I abandoned my mother because this prophet saw a vision about her spiritually selling off my prosperity. The painful part was how this man was siphoning money from us using fear and manipulation. Each time he visited, we must part with huge sums of money for him and his ministry,” Sam recounted.
The father of three said the first occurrence that opened his eyes to the possibility of being deceived and exploited was when he fell ill in 2009.
According to him, he was severely ill in the hospital, but Prophet Emmanuel failed to visit him, saying he was having a prayer retreat and could not leave his house.
“When all else failed, my wife carried me to another church here in Ibadan, where they prayed for me and I recovered. They didn’t collect one naira from us. I couldn’t believe it, that someone would pray for you without taking money from you. It was there I knew this Prophet Emmanuel was just for the money. How come he didn’t see the illness in his visions?
“The last straw that broke the camel’s back was when I was credibly informed that he had built a big house without our knowledge. We told him everything about our lives, but he didn’t inform us of his house. This prophet had no job; he lived off people who consulted him. When I saw the apartment he built, I realised he built his house on our dime,” Sam recounted.
Also speaking, Mary noted that the amount of money they gave the self-acclaimed prophet could not be estimated.
“All through those years, I can’t really account for our lives. He would tell us everyone around us are spiritual agents and we should not give them anything, but he kept taking from us. He would come here, pray, put olive oil on his mouth and spray it on us and our things, and collect money, but not much was changing.
“We had no car, no sign of improvement, and remained tenants living in a rented apartment for like nine years. We were giving him our resources and he built a house out of us. We don’t know what else he took from us. It was when our eyes opened in 2015 that my husband vowed to build our own house and he did.
“Since that day, we don’t listen to any soothsayer; if they crop up on our TV, we change the channel. I attend church though my husband doesn’t most of the time, but I no longer go from place to place looking for miracles or visions. They are like business centres for these seers and clowns,” Mary stated.
Financial scams under religious guises
Financial scams have taken different religious guises for centuries; however, the forms of it in Nigeria involve self-proclaimed clerics and self-acclaimed prophets exploiting vulnerable followers through fraudulent investments, visa promises and miracle sales.
Although many of the reported suspects identify with Christianity, some suspects are also affiliated with Islam and, in some cases, are Muslim leaders as well.
Some of these religious leaders are known to promote non-existent real estate, forex or business ventures, urging followers to invest their life savings with promises of miraculous financial returns.
There are those who also claim to operate international donor foundations, fake grants or divine empowerment funds, charging registration or processing fees to swindle followers out of large sums.
There is also what has been termed ‘miracle merchandising.’ This involves demanding heavy, continuous ‘seed offerings’ or donations under duress in exchange for physical or financial breakthroughs.
Some of these also take the form of visa and travel rackets, where unscrupulous clerics claim ‘divine visions’ about members relocating abroad and collect non-refundable fees for guaranteed foreign visas that never materialise.
In 2023, the General Overseer of Faith on the Rock Ministry International, Apostle Theophilus Ebonyi, was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for running a multi-billion-naira fake grant scam.
Popularly called Theo Ebonyi, the apostle, whose ministry is located in Nasarawa State, was accused of swindling his followers and others out of over N1.3bn.
The EFCC alleged that Ebonyi asked his victims to pay a $1,300 fee each to access a $20bn grant from the US-based Ford Foundation.
“Investigations by the EFCC showed that the Ford Foundation had no arrangement, grant, relationship or business with Ebonyi.
“The Foundation pointedly disclaimed him and his NGO, stressing that it had no link whatsoever with them. The commission has also traced five properties he acquired as proceeds of his criminal dealings,” the EFCC said.
In April, the Federal High Court in Lafia, Nasarawa State, ordered the final forfeiture of a slew of landed properties linked to Ebonyi, located in parts of Nasarawa State bordering the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, to the Federal Government.
Justice M. O. Olajuwon ordered the forfeiture, saying the EFCC proved the properties seized from Ebonyi to be proceeds of crime.
Bogus miracles and ‘spiritual products’
For years, Enugu-based Godwin Cheya, also known as Prophet Sunday Koboko, had operated under the radar of the authorities while happily fleecing his followers, who hung on his every word.
That changed when a woman, Mrs Jane Ngene, filed a petition with the EFCC, alleging that the self-acclaimed prophet presented himself as a true man of God and lured her into believing that he had the power to raise her late husband from the dead.
Ngene further alleged that she was also lured into paying for a fraudulent scheme where members of Cheya’s ministry were assured of benefitting according to their investments.
She revealed that the total money for the scheme and the paid miracle for the ‘resurrection’ of her late husband was N6.7m.
Not long after this, another petitioner, Okey Uwakwe, alleged that Cheya convinced him that he was capable of controlling his brother, who had travelled outside Nigeria.
Uwakwe said his brother had left the country since 1997 and was hopeful that the prophet would spiritually make him return to the country. To achieve this, he said he was lured into paying the sum of N6.2m for spiritual work.
From these petitions, the Enugu Zonal Directorate of the EFCC turned its flashlight onto Cheya’s activities. Soon, members started flooding the office with claims of how they were defrauded by the self-acclaimed prophet.
Findings showed that Cheya sold various spiritual and material prosperity ‘products’ to members. These included ‘miracle stickers’ to enable financial breakthrough, ‘spiritual dragons’ to fight their spiritual battles and ‘Holy Ghost thunder’ for spiritual protection, among others.
In July, the EFCC secured Cheya’s conviction and sentence before Justice H. O. Eya of the Enugu State High Court.
One of the charges read that sometime between 2023 and February 2025 in Enugu, the convict defrauded and obtained N136m from unsuspecting members of his church under the false pretence that he won N30bn in the Baba Ijebu lotto game.
He claimed that investors in his “investment scheme will receive dividends according to their investments.”
Cheya pleaded guilty to the charges when they were read to him, and Justice Eya convicted and sentenced him to one-year imprisonment with an option of N500,000 fine.
The court also ordered that the convict’s landed property be forfeited to the Federal Government through the EFCC, and the proceeds from its sale be used as restitution for the victims of the offence.
Muslim clerics arrested
In January last year, the word ‘ganusi,’ a Yoruba word meaning to open one’s mouth in anticipation of something dropping into it, was uttered by Fuji icon, Wasiu Ayinde, also known as K1 De Ultimate, and subsequently went viral.
The word came about in the lead-up to his late mother’s burial, in reference to some Islamic clerics, or Alfas.
Social media users and people across the country interpreted the remark as implying that certain Alfas attend funeral ceremonies primarily for financial gain, attracting criticism from some Muslim clerics.
But behind the phrase have been real-life instances of men claiming to be Muslim clerics who were involved in one form of financial fraud or another.
In June last year, the Nigeria Police Force arraigned two self-proclaimed Islamic clerics, Saheed Aremu and Tolani Osuolale, for “defrauding” a medical doctor of N280m.
They allegedly perpetrated the act under the guise of performing spiritual rituals on the money between November 2020 and September 2023 in Ibadan, Oyo State, and the Oworonsoki area of Lagos.
The defendants were arraigned at the Federal High Court in Ikoyi, Lagos, on a five-count charge bordering on advance fee fraud, obtaining by false pretences, impersonation, conspiracy and stealing.
The police said the defendants deceived the victim, Patrick Akaraiwe, into believing that his money required spiritual fortification before he could invest in a property acquisition.
The defendants, posing as Islamic spiritual leaders (Alfas), allegedly collected $200,000 (about N270m) from the doctor in three instalments.
Justice Daniel Osiagor ordered that the defendants be remanded in the custody of the Nigerian Correctional Service and adjourned the matter for the hearing of the bail application.
A month earlier, in the same year, a 55-year-old Islamic cleric, Olaide Ajala, was charged before an Iyaganku Chief Magistrates’ Court, Ibadan, over alleged N7.6m fraud which he reportedly committed in June 2024.
The defendant was charged on a three-count charge bordering on conspiracy, fraud and stealing, and the prosecution counsel, Inspector Salewa Hammed, told the court that the defendant allegedly conspired with others at large to commit the offence.
Hammed alleged that the defendant obtained N7m from one Mujeeb Adebayo under the pretence of conducting prayers for him over his business problem, which he knew to be false.
“The defendant and his cohort were alleged to have run away after duping the complainant,” she said, adding that the defendant stole the money and fraudulently converted it to his own use.
Although the defendant pleaded not guilty to the charges, the Magistrate, M. M. Olagbenro, admitted the defendant to bail in the sum of N1m with two sureties in like sum.
‘Many religious leaders are in detention’
In April, the Chairman of the EFCC, Ola Olukoyede, disclosed that many religious leaders in the country were currently in the commission’s detention for fraudulent practices.
He pointed out that both Christian and Muslim institutions were susceptible to corruption, noting that some pastors, bishops and imams had faced prosecution and conviction.
“I have a lot of them (religious leaders) in my holding facility as I’m talking to you. I have a lot of them that are convicted for fraudulent practices,” Olukoyede said, adding that wrongdoing is largely a reflection of the morals of individuals rather than their religious affiliation.
He added that the EFCC had previously investigated the founder of Streams of Joy International, Pastor Jerry Eze, over suspected money laundering after receiving intelligence reports about significant inflows into his accounts.
Olukoyede added that the probe, which lasted six months, tracked foreign transactions from countries including the United States, Colombia, Sri Lanka and Togo into the pastor’s domiciliary accounts.
“We saw dollars and pounds dropping in like raindrops,” Olukoyede said, noting that the investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing.
In 2024, Olukoyede, who spoke at a Redeemed Christian Church of God leadership conference in Lagos on Friday, disclosed that the agency at the time recovered “many millions from a religious organisation.”
“They appointed you a pastor, and that is when you become a big man. We don’t even know what you are doing to earn a legitimate living. You live on the ministry and the church or mosque money. You can’t even explain the source of your wealth.
“Some religious organisations are more corrupt than public offices. I have evidence towards that. You look at the speck in someone else’s eyes, but meanwhile, there is a log in yours,” he said.
In August 2020, the Federal Government signed the Companies and Allied Matters Act into law. Under the law, religious bodies and charity organisations will be strictly regulated by the Registrar-General of the Corporate Affairs Commission and a supervising minister.
Under Section 839 of CAMA 2020, the CAC can suspend trustees and appoint interim managers for associations or religious bodies.
While proponents argued that the law brings financial transparency and accountability to non-profit and religious groups, many religious leaders, especially pastors, had rejected the law, which they described as a declaration of war against the church.
Clerics denounce fraud
Commenting on cases of Christian clerics who indulge in financial scams, the pastor of Multiply Christian Network, Daniel Okunoye, described this as one of the outgrowths of greed and the inordinate love of money among many who claim to speak for God.
“When a person is called to be a Christian leader, they are not only expected to be doctrinally sound, but must also be someone of moral purity, not greedy for money, deceitful or violent. These are the biblical standards that are laid down for leaders.
“We must, however, judge Christianity by the standards set by the Bible, not by the actions of one cleric who has failed morally or lives against the moral standards set forth in Scripture. Christians must also be discerning. When you find someone selling miracles or selling what God has freely given to us through Christ, we should call them out,” Okunoye told Saturday PUNCH.
On his part, a Muslim cleric, Ismaila Bello, condemned Alfas and leaders who abuse their position of trust by fleecing people of their money.
Quoting from the Quran, Bello emphasised that Islam denounces those who wrongfully take other people’s property or wealth through deceit, bribery or false pretences.
“God hates fraud or economic theft in any form. Any cleric that tells you to bring money for spiritual prayers or fortification or makes outrageous claims to deceive people for money is not a true Muslim. Islam is not the one who taught them these; such fake Alfas are hypocrites,” Bello added.
‘Illiteracy, greed fuelling religious extortion’
Speaking with Saturday PUNCH, a Professor of Sociology of Religion, Religious Ethics and Religious Factors in Security, Peace and Conflict Discourse at the University of Ibadan, Jacob Ayantayo, noted that many people fall victim to religious extortion because they trust religious figures who they believe interpret spiritual mysteries to them.
He added that religious leaders have the tendency to move from using religious to explain the seen and unseen to work on the psyche of their members.
“The personality of the religious followers also come into play; majority of them are illiterates, and even those ones who are literate (including the professors among them) are theologically illiterate. On that account, they can be easily manipulated.
“An average Nigerian is also very greedy. This greed is manifested in prayer points and some lyrics of songs people sing. It’s a mentality; and impatience is part of Nigeria’s culture. In addition to this, it boils down to state failure which makes people believe they don’t have a future, because there is no certainty in the country. So, people want to work and save for a rainy day and expect ‘miracle credit alerts.’
“In places, where the government functions and people are literate, there is a precise and logical pathway that will be followed. We also lack any intention to censor religious activities. In some places, anybody can build a church and teach anything,” Ayantayo explained.
He called on more education and critiques from the populace and urged the government to stop politicising religion which has made it a free-for-all community.
Victor is a Senior Correspondent at Punch Newspapers’ Features Desk with over ten years of experience as a writer and blogger. He has reported on a wide range of topics, including Lagos State Government affairs and Lagos politics, blending in-depth research with engaging storytelling. Victor’s work demonstrates hands-on newsroom experience, editorial insight, and a dedication to clear, accurate, and compelling journalism.
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