PUNCH: South-South zone pulls out of Assemblies of God Church

The South-South zone of the Assemblies of God Nigeria, has pulled out of the church alleging marginalisation, gross injustice in ministers’ remuneration; unhealthy rivalry among ministers, inefficiency and escalating administrative and financial malfeasance.

The zonal chairman, Central Working Committee, South-South General Council, Assemblies of God, Evang. Nsikak Akpan, said that his zone decided to break away from the general council administration as a means of entrenching some degree of self-governance on all the zones under the general council administration of the church.

Akpan stated this in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State on Saturday at a press conference, attended by other executive members of the church including executive members of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria in Akwa Ibom.

According to Akpan, the general council had grown too big, which bred inefficiency and became too expensive to run. He added that the trend led to unhealthy rivalry, resulting in a supremacy battle between the General Superintendent of Assemblies of God, Rev. Prof Paul Emeka and the executive committee members under Rev. Dr. Chidi Okoroafor.

He noted that there was no end in sight to the unhealthy rivalry and the inefficiency as the two clerics had been enmeshed in a fierce legal tussle, a development, he said had painted the church in a bad light.

“The South-South zone of the Assemblies of God has called for the decentralisation of the general council administration to end marginalisation and gross injustice in ministers’ remuneration; unhealthy rivalry among ministers; inefficiency and escalating administrative and financial malfeasance.

“The only panacea to the growing crisis enveloping the Assemblies of God in Nigeria, leading to the birth of two general councils, which often result in fresh crises in the church across the nation, is to decentralise and reorganise the General Council into six or 12 autonomous general councils with little economic and administrative power at the centre,” he said.