There’s no deportation order against me – Pastor Tobi Adegboyega

The pastor of Nation Family, Tobi Adegboyega, has said he’s not about to be deported from the UK where he’s facing allegations of financial misconduct.

Speaking to BBC, he said, “There is no deportation order. Let me make that clear.”

On whether he will eventually get deported, the cleric said, “The courts and all the other processes will decide that.”

Addressing claims of living in the UK illegally, Adegboyega lamented that he thought his family was handling his immigration paperwork, having arrived in 2005 at age 25 on a visiting visa.

He said he lost track of the process which informed the delay in applying to regularise his immigration status.

Asked if he would move his church on getting deported, Adegboyega said, “It’s impossible.

“My organisation is here, it is everywhere. To move it to anywhere else is to leave people to keep killing themselves. So no, we are not going to move the organisation. We are just going to establish more and find what we need to do.”

The cleric, who was in designer clothes and arrived for the interview in a convoy of Lamborghini and G-Wagon Mercedes Benz, said his choice of clothes connects with the generation he’s trying to reach.

“I practice my own Christianity by impacting my own community and ensure I don’t stay within the four walks of a church and tell people about going to heaven. I put on what is right that connects to the generation I’m speaking to so that they are not attracted to drug dealers. So that what they, what they are looking for, they can find the hope of that in me,” he said.

On exploitation allegations from former church members who said they had been forced to donate money after taking out loans and through benefit fraud. Adegboyega dismissed them as coming from disgruntled elements.

“If you have 1,000 people in a place, are you telling me 30 people will not be disgruntled? How on earth do you run an organisation without disgruntled people?” he said.