A former top member of the Living Faith Church also known as Winners Chapel, Mr. Sola Martins has alleged that two of the children his wife had for him were children from other men according to a DNA test that he secretly carried out on the children.
But the wife, who also bears Sola, now remarried to a widower in the US has a completely different story from what Sola Martins said in a Facebook post.
She is also alleging that her ex-husband was harassing her sister and her stepdaughter sexually.
Both Sola Martins and his ex-wife were active members of the Winners Chapel in the 90s. There was a fellowship centre in their house. They were quite close to Bishop David Oyedepo. The couple were said to have deep pockets supporting many mission projects and causes. Many people looked up to them as ideal couples, who inspired many other couples.
Marital row: Martins story
As it is however the story has changed. Sola Martins was first to break his silence on the issue in a Facebook post on June 7. In the post titled, “A search for missing son”, he alleged that his wife wanted him dead after he found out that two of the children she had for him were from other men.
He said he started suspecting his ex-wife when she gave birth eight months after their marriage. He wrote in the post, “She gave birth on the eight-month after our wedding. The doctor confirmed that it was a nine-month pregnancy, not a premature delivery,”
Martins who had chains of businesses with international affiliations said he was attending Household of God Church with his wife and that they had won couple of the year in the Church before his wife persuaded him to join Winners’ Chapel.
He said he did not treat any of the children as children born out of wedlock but that the story of their marriage changed when an alleged love affair began between his wife and a family doctor. In the course of the affair, he alleged that his life was threatened, a development which informed his decision to relocate to the US with his family.
In the US, he said he made sure he satisfied his wife with all the good things of life anybody could think of. “We got a three-bedroom apartment in a good neighbourhood, fully furnished with central air conditioners and heater. Gave her GOLD CREDIT CARD, with a spending limit of ($10,000) without my approval. Bought her a jeep (Chrysler). She was not working, because she said she could not do the undignified job done by immigrants in the US. All she did was take kids to school and bring them back.”
Despite all the comforts, Martins alleged that his wife began another immoral relationship with a man who had a problem with his wife. Martins said he had intervened in the crisis between the couple. But by the time he thought he had settled the matter, he discovered that his wife was having affair with the man.
That was what according to him prompted the DNA test. By the time he carried out the test, he said he discovered that three of the children belong to three different men. Only one of them matches that of his own.
He then went on to challenge his wife to subject the children to a DNA test in a different laboratory to prove him wrong.
But the real trouble according to Martins, began when his stepdaughter won three different scholarships to PhD level with monetary value “This is where my wife’s trouble started. She said I should not disclose it to her or give her the offer letter. She said I should choose between her and my daughter which I had for another woman long before our marriage. In fact, she insisted I take her back to Nigeria or prepare for her trouble. I begged her and made her realise that she was the one who said we should bring my daughter close, otherwise I would not have done so. But my wife insisted that I should return my stepdaughter back to Nigeria.”
At this point, Martins said he was confused. “The child was the secret between my wife and I because we agreed that nobody should know that I had a child before the marriage. The girl also did not know she had won a scholarship to PhD in any university of her choice in America. I was the one who received the mail sent to her. I eventually obeyed my wife and returned the girl to Nigeria in some tricky way. She did not know she would be returned to Nigeria the day she was returned. She is a degree holder in Economics now. But the most painful aspects is that the three children left behind with my wife in America have not gone beyond secondary school till date. They are so miserable now, to the extent that they have gone underground because they can no longer relate to their peers.”
While declaring that he does not know the whereabouts of the children he said on getting to Nigeria, “I called to inform my wife of our arrival. On the third day, she stopped picking my calls. On the fifth day, she had cleared every available dollar in my account. She then informed me she was no longer interested in the marriage. I begged and cried on phone on the implications of her actions on my investment license visa and my business if my credit is not serviced as at when due. She said she was not interested in me and my business and cut the phone conversation.”
It was at this point Martins ran to Bishop David Oyedepo “who invited her to Nigeria several times and offered to pay a round trip ticket for her to go back to the US. But she refused until Bishop got tired of calling her. She cut-off my link with the children and asked them not to pick my calls or respond to my email.”
Martins who is presently in Abuja according to Church Times sources said it was during the imbroglio that his wife “arranged marriage with an elderly Nigerian man, Mr. Agbeti, to enable her to regularize her expired paper. But her new husband did not accept any of her children to stay with them.”
While lamenting that he has been unable to reach the children, he appealed to “anyone that can help with the whereabouts of the poor children.”
Marital Row: The story of Agbeti
But the story told by Mrs. Sola Bridget Agbeti the estranged wife of Sola Martins is totally different from the account of Martins. Agbeti who is also the pastor of Peculiar Assembly based in the US gave a dramatised account in a YouTube post On July 23 of how her former husband met her at the University of Ibadan in 1985 and proposed marriage to her on account that God told him that she would be his wife.
They got married only for her ex-husband to tell her a few years into the marriage that he had a child before their marriage. They then both agreed to bring the child into the family house and treat her like all the other children.
But she said things began going wrong when she discovered that her husband was harassing her own sister and later her stepdaughter sexually. She said in the video that it was her step-daughter who reported her father in her school adding that she got to know when the school called for their attention on the matter. The news devastated her.
She said her former husband later decided to bring his daughter back to Nigeria and abandoned her in the US with her three children. “We were living in Atlanta Georgia. But he asked me to go and stay with my mother in New York with the children. When I got to New York after my husband left, I began wondering what had become of our home. I later got a call from Nigeria from Sola’s elder sister and she was chastising me that I took my children to New York and chose to stay behind in the US.
“I was not comprehending what she was saying because it was not even a week that we got to New York that she called. She told me that Sola had claimed that I was cheating on him, that he had done secret DNA and two of our sons were not his sons. She said Sola said I stole his money. She said Sola said I hated his daughter, that my mother did voodoo on him to destroy our family. I almost died. Different people were calling me from Nigeria and narrating a similar story.
“So I spoke to Sola on phone and asked what was going on. I asked him where he got the story from. I told him I would tell the truth and let people know what happened to us. He got upset and became extremely defensive and said to me that he was out of the marriage. I asked him what was going to happen to our children.
“For 12 years Sola held to his narrative to malign me. I had to take a cleaning job and baby-sitting job to fend for my children. He told me he was no longer interested in the marriage. When our sons got admission to college I called him and he said he had nothing to do with the children again. Sola never faced his fears. He never addressed the situation. He fabricated stories. He abandoned me and our children.
“Since 1998 that we left Georgia and came to New York with my three boys and Sola went to Nigeria with Love his stepdaughter, there was no reconciliation. Everything was lies and fabrications. I could not understand why Sola was not ready to deal with the situation. Instead of finding a way to reconcile, he chose to go for a divorce. Even when I was hurting, I wanted things to change. I continued to pray. But it takes two to tangle. It takes one to walk away. Sola filed for divorce. That was in 2007. Initially, I did not feel good. I contested the divorce because God does not like divorce.
But his divorce was granted according to Mrs. Agbeti in 2009. That brought closure to the matter and the relationship between the duo. She said she now began praying, fasting and seeking the face of God on the matter when God spoke to her that she was an Abigail in the hand of Nabal but that He would make her a Sarah in the hands of Abraham. “I never dated anybody for 12 years. I did not want to marry again. I did not want to be manipulated again. I kept what God told me to myself because I did not know how this would happen,” She said in the video.
She eventually got to meet Agbeti through a brother in the Church. The man proposed marriage to her and God said to her to go ahead with the marriage that Agbeti was the Abraham he spoke about. In December 2009, she remarried and God according to her restored her joy.
The thrust of her video, titled victim to victor was that God has given her an “Abraham” in place of her Nabal.
As it is, nobody knows where the truth lies.