Pandora: My Observation About Bishop Oyedepo’s Tax Haven Controversy – Highered

I’m back from Church, and I find myself laughing as people on nairaland are claiming that I am a PR person for Bishop Oyedepo and expect I would soon be back with a rebuttal. I wasn’t intending any rebuttal before, as I am not a PR person for the living faith church. But I would do this in defense of the gospel because a non credible attack against one of Nigeria’s most credible churches is unacceptable.

I think many of us generally get carried away with headlines and forget the substance of an article before rushing to comment.

I have gone through the entire article and I haven’t seen anything indicting of the Oyedepo family. But I would address four observations from the article itself and from the surrounding comments.

Why Should Oyedepo Or Living Faith Avoid Taxes By Setting Up Offshore Accounts Giving The Bible Verse “Give Unto Ceasar What Is Unto Ceasar”?

1) For all the businesses the living faith church operates in Nigeria pays taxes to the Nigerian government. This includes the publishing business, and the other taxable constituent businesses around the universities which includes the microfinance banks, water and beverage factories, farms etc.

2) There are over 200 nations on earth eligible to receive taxes. So British Islands is also ‘ceasar’. Every nation has the responsibility to make themselves tax attractive to welcome foreign investment and Oyedepo and his family are just as eligible as anyone else to search for better priced tax opportunities for their personal or ministry benefit.

Is Living Faith Investment Carriage A Secret?

Inside the Mantle book and under the finance section of the living faith church details to great extent the administrative procedure for the church, it is well cited that the living faith church can maintain asset management to protect the church’s income. Or did you expect the church to warehouse millions of dollars with banks who would live large on the proceeds and expose the hard earned income of worshippers to inflation even before the church uses it?

Are Oyedepo’s Universities The Most Expensive In Nigeria As Claimed By The Article?

We all know this to be untrue. The Living Faith university system runs one of the most pocket friendly private universities in Nigeria when comapred to secular varsities of equal standing. There’s nothing unusual about the price of Living faith schools.

I suspect that the addition of this claim was just to make Oyedepo look further bad and horrible.

Does Living Faith Maintain Four Jets?

This is another claim that has been debunked several times by Leke Beecroft of Church gist and many others who cared to explain.
The living faith church has used four to five planes in the past to convey its church leadership. It regularly sells her older planes to buy new ones. Currently, the church uses more of its helicopter to shuffle the church leadership and that of the RCCG around the country. While deemphasizing on the use of the private jet.

However, the article presented it as though the living faith church maintains an active fleet of four jets on standby in a futile attempt to further make the church appear greedy and evil.