Sowore fires back at Pastor Olumide Emmanuel, says poor members must benefit from sweat equity in church-owned universities
By Ishaya Ibrahim
Former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore has hit back at Pastor Olumide Emmanuel over his defence of high tuition fees in church-owned universities.
Sowore first accused prosperity preachers of running an exploitative system on a recent episode of The Honest Bunch. He claimed they extract money, time and faith from poor congregants while deliberately denying them any real benefit from the wealth their sacrifices create.
Pastor Olumide Emmanuel responded by arguing that church-owned universities charge fees that make them self-sufficient.
In a rebuttal, Sowore said it was unfair for churches to collect funds from struggling members to build elite institutions — schools, universities and business empires — only to later separate those institutions from the church so that the original contributors, the poor, are locked out.
“He (Pastor Olumide Emmanuel) openly admitted that churches raise ‘capital’ from poor members to build elite institutions… only to later separate those institutions from the church so they can ‘survive.’ In plain language, that means the people who paid for these schools are deliberately excluded from them. That is exploitation,” Sowore wrote.
He described the practice as a denial of “sweat equity,” arguing that members who give sacrificially should have a stake in the assets built with their money.
Sowore further claimed that church funds are routinely used to acquire private jets, helicopters, luxury properties and high-end estates that ordinary members can never afford. He pointed to popular church estates such as Redemption Camp and Canaan Land, noting that while they boast constant electricity and running water, the residents are mostly wealthy individuals, politicians and business elites — many of whom do not even regularly attend services.
“Where are the provisions for low-income housing for members? Where is the housing for the poor who attend massive programmes like the Holy Ghost Congress and are forced to sleep outdoors?” he asked. “There is practically none.”
Sowore rejected Pastor Emmanuel’s claim that the nation would be better if run like Redemption Camp or Canaan Land. He argued that the same political and economic elites who have mismanaged Nigeria — many of them senior church members, big donors and celebrated tithe-payers — are already deeply embedded inside these churches.
“Yet, unlike Jesus, you have not driven them out of the house of the Lord. Instead, they are welcomed, honoured, and elevated,” Sowore said.
He concluded that faith-based organisations should be vehicles for upliftment and shared prosperity, not “extraction or extortion,” and warned that the current model only institutionalises inequality under the guise of divine blessing.
