Gospel singer, Tope Alabi, has threatened to sue Canada-based pastor, Tayo Kumuyi, for linking her to the deaths of several gospel ministers, including Olayemi Bolaji, aka Toluwanisings.
Toluwanisings died on October 14.
Ms Alabi, through her solicitor, Toluwanimi Okunade of Oakmount Legal Practitioners, issued a cease-and-desist letter (dated October 24) to the leader of Pastor Tayo Ministries.
In the letter, Ms Alabi demanded immediate removal and retraction of the publication published between October 20 and 24, as well as an apology within 24 hours, from the handlers of the Facebook page, Pastor Tayo Ministries.
“These statements accuse our client of murder and of ritual killing. There is no more serious allegation that can be made against a person, least of all a minister of the gospel. They are false in every particular,” the letter explained. “You have produced no evidence, because none exists. No investigation, police finding or court decision supports a word of them.”
Insisting that Ms Alabi “privately and publicly mourned the late Toluwanisings, and had no part in his death or in the death of anyone else”, her lawyers accused the page handler of exploiting “the grief of a bereaved family and a nation, and turned it into a weapon against an innocent woman, for reasons best known to you”.
The solicitors described the cleric’s conduct as dishonest, saying his comment was not a “revelation” but a deliberate, reckless and malicious publication of falsehood to the world, repeated daily, with a call to his followers to spread it further.
The lawyers said they were dissatisfied that the publications attracted hundreds of reactions, comments, and shares, adding that comments under the posts indicated readers believed the allegations.
The lawyers quoted a post, “Tope Alabi, no letter will save you from my hand. Your only option is leaving your hiding place”, which they described as a threat, adding that such a statement was not a response to a legal notice, but a threat of harm.
Stating that “the publications complained of are, in our client’s view, actionable in libel under the applicable law,” the lawyers believed that his comments “impute serious criminal conduct to our client and are capable of gravely injuring her personal reputation, professional standing and ministry”.
They stated that claiming to make “spiritual revelations or religious opinions does not, without more, exempt their publication from the ordinary requirements of the law”.
The solicitors demanded that the request for an unreserved retraction and apology must remain pinned on the Facebook page for 14 consecutive days and receive prominence reasonably equivalent to that of the original publications.
They warned that if the demands were not met within 24 hours, they would approach the court for declaratory and injunctive relief, damages and costs, applications for interlocutory relief where legally justified, complaints to Meta Platforms and referrals of the alleged threats to law enforcement.
We have recently deactivated our website's comment provider in favour of other channels of distribution and commentary. We encourage you to join the conversation on our stories via our Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages.