Calabar cleric gets double life sentence for serial rape
A Family Court docket sitting in Calabar, Defective River Converse, has handed down two lifestyles sentences to Apostle Favour Okoise, the self-styled Total Overseer of The Refiner’s Fire Church, following convictions in two separate rape cases appealing more than one victims, including a 16-year-frail lady.
The court, presided over by Family Excessive Court docket 2, delivered its judgment on June 16 and 17, 2025, after discovering the Edo Converse-born cleric responsible of more than one counts of rape, defilement of a minor, and acquiring by false pretenses.
Within the first case, Okoise became once convicted on three counts of rape appealing three grownup females and one depend of fraudulently acquiring advantages under false pretenses. The 2d case centered on the rape of a 16-year-frail lady, for which he purchased a further lifestyles sentence and became once ordered to pay ₦1,000,000 in restitution to the survivor.
Prosecuted by the Defective River Converse Ministry of Justice thru the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP), led by Okoi E. Ukam, Esq., and handled in court by Cletus Adama, Esq., the trial started in 2023 and culminated in a judgment that observers described as a landmark ruling for sexual violence cases in the divulge.
Upright counsel to the victims, Doris Nduanusi, Esq., revealed that the convict aged religious manipulation to milk female congregants, convincing them that sex became once a divine requirement for religious initiation. “He known because it a ‘special dealing’ with the Holy Spirit,” she acknowledged.
Despite being remanded since February 2024, members of the church were allegedly misled to think Okoise became once on a non secular retreat. “It became once perfect after the conviction that the actuality started to break of day on them,” Nduanusi well-known, describing the cleric as unrepentant for the length of the trial.
The case purchased indispensable backing from civil society, critically the Gender and Pattern Action (GADA), led by Ambassador Nkoyo Toyo, who partnered with the Ministry of Justice to make stronger the victims and be clear a faithful outcome.
