Bishop arrested over alleged N500m fraud

After three months of trailing him, detectives in Enugu State Police Command have arrested the presiding cleric at City of Liberation and Comfort Ministry, Enugu, Bishop Ginika Obi,
over an alleged N500 million fraud.
Spokesman of the Police Command, Ebere Amaraizu, said Obi had been trailed by operatives for three months.
“Bishop Ginika Obi in charge of City of Liberation and Comfort Ministry is now helping police operatives of the Commissioner of Police, Enugu Monitoring Unit, following his arrest at the weekend in a hotel in Enugu where he has been taking refuge.
“Before now, the suspect, who hails from Umuaku in Uli community of Ihiala Local Government Area in Anambra State, is also in charge of an alleged financial Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) known as `Build Your Generational Organisation’ where his victims are made to invest with a hope of reaping a bumper financial dividend.
“His victims are numerous with various degrees of complaints of huge amount of money swindled from them without anything to show for it.
“The suspect on noticing that police are on his trail based on complaints of alleged swindling of some suspected members of the public to the tune of N500 million with his wife and some of his pastors, disappeared for months.
“The bishop, however, left his wife in Enugu Prisons custody over the matter.
“During his disappearance from Enugu, preliminary investigations revealed that he escaped and relocated to Asaba in Delta State to avoid being nabbed by police operatives for months.
“Luck ran out of the suspect over the weekend as he was trailed based on intelligence information to a hotel at Amechi Road off Agbani Road in Enugu where police operatives, acting on a tip-off, nabbed him,’’ he said.
Amaraizu said that the bishop had also revealed during preliminary investigations that he never knew that his alleged financial NGO would “turn out in this way”.
“The suspect disclosed that the amount he defrauded was not up to N500 million but N186 million, while regretting his action,’’ the police spokesman said.
Some of the suspect’s victims, Blessing Edekin a widow, Nnenna Okonkwo and Chidiebere Okolo, said that the bishop had defrauded them of various sums of money and disappeared.
They expressed delight at his arrest.
The Commissioner of Police, Mr Danmallam Mohammed, has directed a full scale investigation into the alleged nefarious activities of the cleric.