David Williams
The Minister of Power, Bayo Adelabu has accused the founder of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Oke Afa, Lagos, Primate Elijah Ayodele of blackmail and attempting to extort N150 million from him for “spiritual intercession” to make him governor of Oyo state.
Adelabu, a former governorship candidate, has declared his intention to contest the 2027 Oyo governorship election.
Adelabu, in a petition dated October 13, 2025, signed by Bolaji Tunji, the minister’s special adviser on strategic communications and media relations, to the director-general of the Department of State Services (DSS), accused Ayodele of making false prophecies intended to malign his reputation after he rebuffed all efforts from the cleric, who allegedly demanded a huge sum of money and expensive spiritual items.
In a series of text messages between Ayodele and Adelabu, the cleric asked the minister to bring 24 APC flags for prayers, also demanded 1,000 pieces of saxophones/trumpets, with the least expensive Nigerian fairly-used grade costing a total of N50 million and the imported grade-one from China at N130 million in total.
Ayodele asked Adelabu to bring the items by April 1 and later extended the grace till April 4.
The cleric told the minister that he had sent him several letters while he was CBN deputy governor and other times to the minister in Ibadan, but there was no reply.
He repeatedly made requests to call the minister, who told him he was on pilgrimage. Ayodele asked him to “recite almu nasira 200 times”.
The cleric told the minister that what he was doing was based on instruction given to him by God while Ayodele repeatedly told the minister that he would rule Oyo state.
“I have divine advice for you sir, which can help a lot sir, kindly pick my call. Do vigil and the angel of God is coming to hear request by 1am. I don’t want you to lose the coming election. That is why I’m following the instructions”.
The message read in partIn response, the minister told the cleric that he could not afford the expensive items. After the incident, Ayodele, while speaking in his church, said Adelabu had failed and would not become Oyo governor.
In some viral video clips, Ayodele said Adelabu had made mistakes and his message to the minister was a “warning from God”.The cleric dared the minister to arrest or sue him.
