There are emerging details surrounding the circumstances of the death of founder of Fountain of Life Church, Ilupeju Lagos Pastor Taiwo Odukoya.
Odukoya, according to the church, died in the United States of America (USA) on Monday at 67.
Though the church didn’t disclose how he died, It was gathered the respected preacher had health issues mainly triggered by personal tragedies.
According a family source, “the popular pastor really didn’t get over the losses he suffered. He tried to be strong but there is a limit to what a man can take.”
Pastor Taiwo, as he is fondly called, lost his charismatic first wife, Bimbo, in a Sosoliso plane crash in 2005. She was 45.
The loss devastated the Pastor, who had a well-known synergy with his wife, whom he had met as an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan.
According to the source “the Pastor was more devastated by what people said after Pastor Bimbo died than what actually happened. Many people said nasty things that saddened his heart. He was touched by the savagery of the comments.
“Well, he had no choice and decided to move on despite the heart break. It took a lot of talking for him to decide to remarry,” the source shared.
The second loss suffered by the pastor was the death of his second wife, Pastor Nomthi who died on November 9, 2021.
The death of his second wife, a South African, Nomthi, who had two children for the preacher, and died of cancer, at age 47 shattered the man on God.
“If Pastor Bimbo’s death was shattering, Pastor Nomthi’s demise was a technical knock-out. It knocked Pastor down and out. He was inconsolable. He was very bothered about what people would say.
“It left him totally lifeless. There was nothing we could tell him. It took something deep out of him and some of us became afraid for him.”
When he lost his twin sister few weeks after his wife’s death, sources said it was more or less the last straw.
For someone who has lost two important women in his life, it was tough to take the death of someone with whom he shared his womb and childhood.
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“It was a personal, humbling tragedy. He would just gaze and seemed to become completely disinterested in things around him. It was unusual to become totally lost in conversations and issues.
“I believe something died in him at that point. He tried to put up a strong face for the church but he was human. He was died within and it was only a matter of time. That he lived for almost two years after showed the strength of his character.,” The family source explained.
It was discovered that the health issues began to manifest, putting him off balance and needing international hospital trips from which he never recovered.
