Anita Oyakhilome’s name removed from Christ Embassy church website

On Sunday, two days after it was reported that Anita Oyakhilome had filed for divorce, Christ Embassy deleted her pictures and personal information from its official website, www.christembassy.org. Many describe the action as the beginning of a process to shut her out of the church, after she accused her husband of “adultery” and “unreasonable behaviours” in a divorce suit filed in London last April but only made public on Friday.

Christ Embassy’s new website now shows only Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, with a broad smile welcoming his followers to the month of August, and tagging it, ‘Month of Praise’. In the message on the website, Oyakhilome also urges his followers to “rejoice for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Also, on the website of the Rhapsody of Realities, a daily devotional co-authored by the esrtwhile couple, there’s nothing to show that Anita is still recognised as the only visible face on the website among the family members is that of her husband. It was too early to know if the September edition of the Rhapsody of Realities still has the photographs of both the pastor and his wife as it used to be. In the past, when the going was good, Anita and Chris Oyakhilome held hands on the church website and smiled broadly. They projected the image of a perfect couple. But P.M.NEWS checks at the weekend revealed that there is confusion in the church following the divorce suit filed by Anita to end her over two decades marriage to the founder of Christ Embassy Church. In the past, Pastor Chris headed the Nigerian branch of the church, though he travelled to other branches occasionally, while Anita headed the branch in London and its environs. Christ Embassy and its founder have been embroiled in a myriad of controversies in the past. In 2010, Oyakhilome was accused of engineering a money laundering scheme in Nigeria, and questions swirled around his finances because of his glamorous lifestyle.

 But the latest scandal involving Anita and Chris, who have two daughters, seems to threaten the very existence of one of the biggest churches in Nigeria. Christ Embassy runs several arms including the Healing School, Rhapsody of Realities, and an N.G.O called the Innercity Missions as well as three Christian television channels: LoveWorld TV, LoveWorld SAT and LoveWorld Plus. The church is scattered all over the world, including in the United Kingdom, the United States, South America and the whole of Europe. Stories about women bringing men of God down are not new.