Anglican Communion News Service - Digest News

The general public is hereby warned of the activities of some fraudulent personalities who exploit Christian love and the good name of the Church all in a bid to defraud unsuspecting people especially foreigners of money.  The trend has become alarming recently as we receive dozens of mails seeking to verify supposed priests administering bequests of none existing estates, missionaries selling pets that never get delivered or collecting aids for the sick or orphaned with seemingly convincing pictures.

We have even seen a situation where a supposed knight collects money to organise homosexual meetings that only take place on sponsored news reports.  The Church of Nigeria strongly dissociates herself from all these activities and states categorically that no respectable minister of the Gospel in our Church nor indeed any true member sends unsolicited mails to people they have never met offering or requesting money.

Though we have over 6,000 ordained clergy, and an even larger number of evangelists and other lay workers, there are organised structures in the Church whereby identities can be verified even to include the ever growing millions of members of the Church. The Church therefore advises the general public to verify identities of people before sending money to fraudster who have not the slightest belief in God, but are only trying to use Church sentiments to lure people. Avoid them and ignore their mails. Such mails can be reported to the originating ISP (e.g. yahoo, hotmail etc). The mails can also be forwarded to our Government agency info@efccnigeria.org for tracking and prosecution of those involved when caught. The Lord bless you as you remain steadfast and faithful in Christ.

The Rev. Canon Akin Tunde Popoola
Director of Communications Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)
Primate's Office, 24 Douala Street, Wuse Zone 5,Box 212 ADCP, Abuja, FCT, Nigeria.
E-mail: communicator1@anglican-nig.org,  communicator1nig@yahoo.com