A LAWSUIT instituted against the leader of the Living Faith Church popularly known as Winner’s Chapel, Mr. David Oyedepo, by a Lagos-based legal practitioner, Mr. Robert Igbinedion, was on Thursday dismissed by an Ogun State High Court.
Presiding over the case, Justice Ojo not only dismissed the suit for lacking in merit, but slapped N20,000 in costs on the applicant, Mr. Igbinedion, who filed the charges on behalf of the unnamed victim.
In dismissing the case, the Judge submitted that Robert Igbinedion neither present the victim to the court nor did he prove that he was himself present to witness the assault that Mr. Oyedepo, popularly known as Bishop Oyedepo, allegedly perpetrated.
Indeed a video was circulated on the internet portraying an incensed individual, allegedly Oyedepo, hitting the face of a young woman who had confessed in the video to being “a witch for Jesus” during what appeared to be a large church service.
Several sources have identified the church as the one lead by the influential, flamboyant David Oyedepo, identified by local and international media as Nigeria’s richest Pentecostal church pastor.
Defending Oyedepo on Thursday was legal counsel Dele Adesina, who had argued that there was no evidence, physical or otherwise, to prove that his client perpetrated any such physical assault as the one for which he has been sued.
“W e humbly submit that ‘Miss Justice’ is a fictitious person, not capable of being represented in court,” stated Mr. Adesina, citing the 1999 Constitution in his challenge on the basis that there is no evidence that the victim is a “living and existing person.”
The applicant, Mr. Igbinideon, however pointed out that the defendant in the suit resorted to legal technicalities to extricate himself from the suit, as opposed to denying that he commited the assault as alleged.
He therefore prayed the court to grant him his reliefs which Justice Ojo denied.