You possibly haven’t taken note of his legal struggles in South Africa. Timothy Omotoso is a Nigerian pastor whose trials in ‘Mandela country’ is putting that country’s legal system itself on trial. He gets taken in and out of jail on charges that come unstuck in their courts. And he is fighting a bid by the governing authorities to declare him a prohibited person and get him deported.
Amidst it all, he commands cult following among associates and his church members who dare the South African government over his fate and accuses it of unjustly persecuting the cleric, which they hyperbolically stated as “fighting God himself.”
Omotoso became a free man again last Tuesday after he was arrested over the previous weekend on immigration charges. A magistrate’s court in the suburb known as East London ordered his release from custody pending an appeal against a decision by the Minister of Home Affairs declaring him a prohibited person. By law, he is entitled to appeal or make representations over that decision.
The magistrate’s decision came as the country’s National Prosecuting Authority announced it would appeal Omotoso’s recent acquittal from multiple charges over which he faced a marathon trial that lasted more than seven years, along with two co-accused persons, and was held in jail while awaiting trial. The 66-year-old pastor at the Jesus Dominion International (JDI) church in South Africa was arrested in 2017 on 32 charges, including rape, sexual exploitation and human trafficking. But in April, this year, an Eastern Cape high court judge acquitted him of those charges and ordered his release. The judge criticised the prosecution’s handling of the case, saying the state had not proved beyond reasonable doubt its case against the cleric and the two assistants who faced charges along with him.
The prosecuting authority had said Omotoso would be deported immediately after his acquittal, but that did not happen. And neither did the cleric himself lie low. He moved to East London, where he launched a highly publicised crusade titled “New Dawn,” to which his fervent followers even invited President Cyril Ramaphosa. The crusade began 4th May – exactly a month after the high court acquitted him and ordered his freedom from more than seven-year-long incarceration. When municipal authorities barred him from using public venues for the crusade, he took to a private property. He was arrested again at wee hours of penultimate Saturday as he was rounding off what his supporters described as a “spiritually electrifying vigil.” His new challenge stems, though, not from the criminal proceedings, but from allegations that he used fraudulent documentation to enter South Africa.
So far, it is doubtful the Nigerian Consulate in South Africa is actively involved in Omotoso’s case. Nether is the Nigerian in Diaspora Commission overtly showing interest. But he is a Nigerian and can’t be abandoned to South African societal wiles.
