So how do you milk a man who has no milk? Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor

President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor in an interview with Punch yesterday bared his mind on the notion that Nigerian pastors milk their poor church members. Excerpts: People claim churches milk the poor and live big on them. What’s your take on this?

It is cheap to criticise; even to criticise what you don’t understand. People don’t understand what they say about the church milking the poor. Can a poor man have money to pay tithe? A man who has no job, can he pay tithe? No, he won’t be able to pay. So how do you milk a man who has no milk?

In a church, you have both the poor and the rich. It is generally not the poor that finance the church. It is those with the means. A man, for example, who earns N10,000, how much is his tithe? His tithe is N1,000. A man who earns N500,000, how much is his tithe? His tithe is 10 per cent which is N50,000. How much would you milk from a man who pays a tithe of N1000?

I even hear people say that the poor give money to start schools, but their children cannot go to the schools. How will they give this money when they are poor? The truth is that, the people who actually give this money are those who have the means to do so. Those people make it possible for churches to start schools.

Now again, why do churches charge high fees in school? You didn’t ask me that, but I’m just throwing that in free. People must understand that there is a standard. The church wants to maintain the standard. In those days, some people will say that when missionaries started school, it was free. Don’t forget that those missionaries were being financed from different places. Who is financing us today? We are financing ourselves. If I got free financing,why won’t we make education free? You must also understand that at the time, the cost of living was not the way it is today. The educational system of Nigeria is in serious trouble, so we need to up the standards. And to do that, you should be able to hire the best hands. If you hire the best, how do you pay them? Where do you get the money to pay them? How do you put the right infrastructure in place? How do you do many of the things that need to be done? How do you run the generators?

Why do you think we have so many poor people in the church and many rich pastors?

Remember that the pastors are pasturing both the poor and the rich. They are all in the same assembly. Both the poor and the rich.

Those who have the means in the church take time to be kind to their pastors. That is something most people don’t realise. They give their pastors money, food and different things. For example, a member of the church goes to his pastor and says, ‘I feel led to give you a car. Take this car.’ Now the pastor has a car. Did he steal it?

As I sit here talking to you now, I can tell you that I am training almost 100 people in institutions of higher learning. Nobody is going to broadcast that. On every 26th of December, I organise what I call poverty alleviation. I have been doing it now for about eight years.

20 corpses uncovered,18 men & 5 women rescued from Ritual dungeon in Oyo(Photo)

About 20 bodies of people believed to have been killed for ritual purposes were discovered, yesterday, in Soka, Oluyole local government area of Oyo State. Also, 18 men and five women, believed to have been bewitched and bound with fetters in a dungeon, were found and rescued. The rescued victims looked emaciated. One of the women was said to have been delivered of a baby who was sold to a waiting buyer among those who always thronged the secluded area at night to buy human parts.Some of the captives were too weak to tell their stories. It was gathered that some Fulani cattle rearers grazed their cattle in the bush around the area. A suspect identified as Akeem Isiaka (38) was arrested in connection with the incident and taken to Sanyo Police Station.Containers and wells containing human parts including skulls were also discovered in the bush. A woman, Titi Adeniyi, who managed to speak, said she had been held captive for more than two years.Another captive, Tunji Alabi, who said he was a bus conductor before he became a victim of the ritualists,could not say much. Rescued grandmother

Asylum family stranded in Paris airport for a week

An Eritrean woman and her eight children have been trapped at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport for more than a week after being deported by the Norwegian government. Norway's immigration services deported Simreth Wolbgeber and her family on March 12 to France, the European country responsible for processing their asylum claim under European Union rules. The family arrived in France early last year, after fleeing the repressive government in Eritrea, and it was there that they were first fingerprinted and registered as asylum seekers.

The French authorities claim to be unable to find temporary accommodation for such a large family, and as a result have left Wolbgeber and her children stranded, sleeping on uncomfortable plastic seats in the airport lounge and depending on charity from the Red Cross as they wait for a place.

"To sit for so many days at an airport with eight children is inhuman. It is outrageous," Ranveig Kaldhol, a church social worker in Ulsteinvik, where Wolbgeber had been living, told The Local.

"It's terrible," Kaldhol added. "They are innocent children and they haven't had one decent meal. They have been living on drinks, cup cakes and yoghurt given to them by the Red Cross, and they haven't had beds, or even a shower. The youngest is only five months old."

She argued that when children are involved the Norwegian authorities had a duty to liaise with a receiving country's immigration agencies.

"The Norwegian government, before they send children, they should know that there is someone to take care of them to give them at least the minimal protection," she said. "They haven't done anything criminal, they have just asked for protection from Eritrea. That's their sin."

Geir Bang Danielsen, the deputy director of Norway's immigration police, told NRK that the responsibility for the family now lay with France's authorities.

"France is responsible for the family according to their duties under the Dublin cooperation," he said. "The aim is to ensure that an asylum seeker get his application processed, but at the same time to ensure that no one travels from country to country and applies for asylum in several Schengen countries."

Here is a picture a friend of Simreth Wolbgeber's took of her in the airport:

Source: TheLocal.no

Malaysia police searches house of missing plane's captain

Malaysia's authorities said Sunday that the police searched the home of the missing MH370 flight's captain on Saturday but they had not publicized the result yet.

Malaysia's Ministry of Transport said in the statement released on Sunday that officers spoke to family members of the pilot named Zaharie Ahmad Shah and experts are examining the pilot' s flight simulator kept in his house.

On Saturday, the police also searched the home of the co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid.

The statement said, as per normal procedure, the Royal Malaysia Police are investigating all crew and passengers on board MH370, as well as engineers who may have had contact with the aircraft before take-off.

"We appeal to the public not to jump to conclusions regarding the police investigation," the ministry added.

The statement also said the search and rescue continues to be a multi-national effort, led by Malaysia. Malaysian officials are contacting countries along two corridors -- a northern one from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, and a southern one stretching from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean where the missing plane might fly to according to Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak.

These countries include: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and France. Officials are requesting assistance from these countries.

The statement said Malaysian officials are currently discussing with all partners how best to deploy assets along the two corridors. Malaysian officials are also asking countries to provide further assistance in the search for the aircraft, including: satellite data and analysis; ground-search capabilities; radar data; and maritime and air assets.

Both the northern and southern corridors are being treated with equal importance, it added.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday in a media conference that the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner was likely to be a deliberate act, and authorities had refocused their investigation on its crew members and passengers.

He said the last satellite contact with the missing flight was at 8:11 a.m. local time (0011 GMT) last Saturday, nearly seven hours after it disappeared from air traffic control radar.

Citing Malaysian air force radar data, the prime minister confirmed previous speculation the missing flight did turn back westward, recrossing the Malaysian peninsula before turning northwest.

But he did not confirm speculation the plane had been hijacked.

Meanwhile, the prime minister said the search in the South China Sea would end and authorities were reassessing the redeployment of assets.

Focus of the search for the missing Malaysian plane has shifted westward to the Indian Ocean, seven days after it lost contact with ground control.

Flight MH370 went missing early last Saturday morning with 239 people on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, sparking a massive search involving more than a dozen nations.

Guess who Oprah invited for lunch?

Lupita's mom and brother.

Is this the world's stupidest car thief?

A car thief has been nabbed by police in Norway after he stole a Saab convertible, almost immediately ran out of petrol, and then called the owner from her own car phone to ask where the fuel card was. The owner, Anne Kristin Korsfur, promptly went looking for the man, finding him at the spot where he had broken down, and then kept him chatting until the police arrived.

"He was a nice guy, but it was good that the police arrived so quickly and arrested him," Korsfur told Norway's Nordlys newspaper. "I'll never yell at my partner when he doesn't get around to filling up the car again: sometimes you want to start the day with an empty tank."

The young man had been staying at the guest house Korsfur runs with her partner Johnny Henriksen, and had managed to snatch the car keys as he brought an empty teacup into their kitchen.

When she arrived at work the next morning, Korsfur spotted a missed call from the mobile phone the couple keep in the car, and, wondering who it could be, rang back.

The man picked up the phone and told her that the car had run out of petrol and that he wanted to know where they kept the card used for paying for fuel. Korsfur pretended he had dialled a wrong number, and then set out to track the man down.

"I guessed that he had driven south, partly because the night before he had asked Johnny how to get from Sørkjosen to Finnsnes, and quite right, I got no further than the turn that goes up Sørkjosfjellet when I saw our car standing by the roadside," Korsfur told the newspaper. "He was wearing a reflective vest, and had the warning triangle set out -- he had done everything by the book."

Before approaching the man, she called her husband, who called the police. She then parked her car and offered to help the man, who had no idea who she was, having only met her partner the previous night.

After calling her son and asking him to bring a jerry can of petrol, Korsfur then chatted to the man for twenty minutes as the police made their way to the scene.

"The situation was so relaxed that I was not in the least bit afraid," she said. "I was about to crack up in laughter the whole time. I had to try really hard to keep a straight face."

It was only when two police officers arrived, that she asked the man to introduce himself to her. He claimed to be her partner, adopting the identity in the car's registration documents.

Then she told him: "I am the person who owns the car you are driving."

The man has been charged with theft and driving without a licence.
Source thelocal.no