Nigeria: Video of Prominent Nigerian Pastor William Kumuyi Moving to London After Encouraging Nigerians to Believe in Current Government Is Old

20 June 2024
Africa Check (Johannesburg)
By Muktar Balogun

Video of prominent Nigerian pastor William Kumuyi moving to London after encouraging Nigerians to believe in current government is old

IN SHORT: Several Facebook users have claimed that Nigerian pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi relocated to the United Kingdom in 2024 because of the Nigerian economy. But the video where the pastor says he is based in London is old and not taken under the current administration of Bola Tinubu.

Several Facebook posts from May 2024 include a video of a Nigerian pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi and his wife, with a caption that says the pastor has relocated to London, the capital of the UK.

At the start of the video, the pastor says he is Nigerian but based in London.

Kumuyi is a prominent Nigerian pastor and the founder and general superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, also known as Deeper Life Bible Church.

On 22 August 2023, the pastor publicly commented on the Tinubu administration which took over in May of that year, saying Nigeria would experience "good changes" under Tinubu. This was met with mixed reactions.

Nigerians have since experienced hardship, from fuel scarcity to rising inflation rate affecting their purchasing power.

It's against this background that Nigerians have posted the video of Kumuyi and his wife saying they are based in London.

Nigerians continue to leave the country in what is popularly referred to as "japa", a term derived from the Yoruba language which means "to run" or "to escape". The term has evolved to refer to the phenomenon of Nigerians leaving the country in search of better opportunities abroad.

Similar claims of the pastor relocating appear here and here. (Note: See other instances at the end of this report).

But is the claim true? We checked.

Video is old

Africa Check used the video verification tool Invid to break down the video into frames in order to do a reverse image search.

A screenshot of the video was found in an article from 22 May 2011. The headline of the article is "Second Visit By Pastor William Kumuyi To Embassy Of God Church".

We also found the same video on the Facebook page of Sunday Adelaja, posted in 2019. Adelaja is the founder of a church called the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations, commonly known as the Embassy of God, based in the Eastern European country of Ukraine, which Kumuyi visited in 2011.

We also found the video posted on YouTube in 2015 by the Embassy of God.

The video where Kumuyi says he is based in London is from over a decade ago. An opinion piece published by Punch newspaper in June 2024 suggests that the pastor's stay in the UK was short-lived and that he has been based in Nigeria ever since.

We rate the claim as misleading.

Similar posts can be found here, here, here and here.

Read the original story, with links and other resources.
Africa Check is a non-partisan organisation which promotes accuracy in public debate and in the media. Twitter @AfricaCheck and www.africacheck.org

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