Nigeria Immigration Service is detaining a United Methodist Church Bishop, Eben K. Nhiwatiwa, who came to country to conduct election of a new Bishop for the United Methodist Church in Nigeria.
Bishop K. Nhiwatiwa, is currently being held at the NIS headquarters in Abuja. He had arrived at the Nnamdi Azikwe Airport Abuja on August 21, to meet with fellow members of the United Methodist Church in Nigeria (UMCN) to kick start the process of electing a new Bishop of the church in Nigeria after the resignation of the Nigerian Bishop John Wesley Yohanna.
But things took a different turn when he arrived Yola, Adamawa State venue for the first meeting with the members of the Southern Nigerian Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in Nigeria.
He was arrested on Friday 23 August 2024, by the Nigerian Immigration officers Adamawa state Command for questioning, after several hours of detention in the Yola Immigration office, Bishop Nhiwatiwa was later confined to his hotel with immigration guards before being taken to Abuja on Saturday August 24, 2024, in the company of an Immigration officer to the Immigration Headquarters in Abuja.
A member of the United Methodist in Nigeria and also a journalist with the Voice of Nigeria Salisu Waziri, who accompanied the Bishop to the NIS in Abuja, was told by an NIS officer in charge Mathais Madug that the Yola Immigration office had interrogated Bishop K. Nhiwatiwa and found nothing wrong with his documents but wondered why they would have to send him back to Abuja for further questioning.
” At the Immigration office in Yola, we have interrogated this Bishop and all his papers are intact. I wonder why they will have to send him back to the Immigration headquarters in Abuja for further questioning,” said Mr. Madug.
“His visa was processed here in Abuja I think if there is anything wrong with his documents just a call from Yola to Abuja would have clarified the issue. Well, I know something is wrong at the top because I learned that the other faction of the Church went to the Immigration headquarters in Abuja to file complaint against the bishop.”
The former Bishop of the United Methodist Church in Nigeria Bishop John Wesley Yahanna who resigned from the Church to join a new denomination Global Methodist Church (GMC) has been accused of being behind the ordeal of the Zimbabwean UMC Bishop K. Nhiwatiwa. This is to frustrate the effort of the Church from electing a new UMC Bishop in Nigeria to replace him.
The Zimbabwean embassy in Abuja is said to have waded into the matter.
