How Pastor Taiwo Odukoya died in US

Details have emerged on the circumstances surrounding the death of founding pastor of Fountain of Life Church Pastor Taiwo Odukoya.

The clergyman died in the United States on Monday. He was aged 67.

The church did not state the cause of his death as the clergyman was not publicly known to be ill.

However, The Nation learnt Odukoya had health complications unknown to the public.

A family source told the newspaper that the tragedies the preacher suffered affected his health.

Odukoya’s first wife Pastor Bimbo Odukoya, known back in the day for her Singles and Married programme aired on TV, died on December 11, 2005, from injuries sustained in a plane crash.

He met Bimbo at the University of Ibadan as an undergraduate.

“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 heartbreak. It took a lot of talking for him to decide to remarry,” the source said.

Odukoya gave love another chance five years later and married a South African Nomthi in January 2010. But she died in November 2021, after 11 years of marriage and two years of battling cancer.

The source said Nomthi’s demise was a “technical knock-out” for Odukoya.

The last straw came when Odukoya’s twin sister Kehinde Hassan died in December 2021, just about a month after his wife’s death.

According to the source, Odukoya “would just gaze and seemed to become completely disinterested in things around him.”

His health challenges necessitated overseas medical trips. But he never recovered.