4 Pastors in police custody over alleged murder of preacher’s wife

– The four top pastors were arrested in Edo state and are currently telling the police in the state what they know about the alleged crime

– The case was contained in a petition to the police by Faith Amayo’s family members who suspected foul play in the report of her husband

– The police in the state confirmed that they are looking into the case and said the family petitioned because of the discrepancy in the earlier report by her husband

Four senior pastors of a popular pentecostal church (name withheld) have been arrested and detained by operatives of zone 5 police headquarters in Benin, Edo state, over an alleged murder of a woman, Mrs Faith Amayo.

File photo of some suspects paraded by the Nigeria police
The deceased, 38, and wife of one of the suspects, Pastor Kingsley Amayo, was allegedly murdered in Uromi town, the administrative headquarters of Esan North-East local government area of the state.

The suspects were arrested on Tuesday, August 9, 2016.

Elder brother of the deceased woman, Engineer Fidelis Evbuomwan, told journalists that the deceased who was yet to have a child, was properly married to Pastor Kingsley Amayo in 2011.

He stated that his bereaved family had to instruct their lawyer to initiate a petition when their in-law, Pastor Kingsley Amayo, gave conflicting accounts of how his wife died in an accident he was also involved.


“On Tuesday, July 26, 2016, Pastor Kingsley Amayo had, through his elder brother, one Chief Iso, informed the family that their daughter, Mrs Faith Amayo, had died in a motor accident at Ujogba, while her husband, Pastor Kingsley Amayo, was driving her to Benin City,” he said.

Engineer Evbuomwan appealed to the police investigators to unravel the location of the accident, the other vehicle allegedly involved in the head-on collision with pastor Amayo’s Sienna vehicle, who rescued them to the hospital where his sister was pronounced “brought-in-dead,” who embalmed her corpse before she was taken to a mortuary in Uromi, why it was not reported to the police and why they could not wait for her family members to see her?

The bereaved elder brother of the deceased, appealed to the police to ensure that justice prevailed as their findings have revealed that no case of accident was either recorded on that fateful day at Ujogba or reported at Ekpoma police division in charge of the area.‎

When contacted, the zonal public relations officer of the police, DSP Emeka Iheanacho, stated that the discrepancies in reports made to the police on the death of the woman informed the investigation.

According to Iheanacho, a case of motor accident was reported at Ekpoma police division by the pastor, but the family of the deceased wrote a petition of alleged murder to the assistant inspector-general of police in the zone.

“The matter was reported at the Edo state command where initially they were investigating a fatal motor accident, before the family of the late woman, wife of the pastor, Mrs. Faith Amayo, now initiated a petition to the office of the assistant inspector-general of police alleging foul play.

“The petition before AIG from the family of the deceased said they suspected that the husband must have used the woman for ritual. That is the matter we are investigating presently,” DSP Iheanacho stated.

On Wednesday, August 10, the Lagos state police command paraded a fake prophet who was reported to have kidnapped a 16-year-old female Muslim.

The 26-year-old suspect by the name David Ifunaya was said to be a Prophet at Immaculate Ministry in Satellite Town area of Lagos state. Ifunaya confessed he really kidnapped the teenager.