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| Pastor Taiwo Odukoya |
The fourth Campmeeting 2016
Guest Minister stands out from this year’s list because he is a virtual regular,
who has been at this annual word festival almost every other year in the recent
past. Another professional on the
pulpit, he is a petroleum engineer who packed in a promising career at Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC to go into full time ministry. Like his
host, Rev Dr Tunde Joda, who walked away from medicine, not a few must have
wondered whether there was a few loosed screws somewhere!
But here we are today, Pastor
Daniel Taiwo Odukoya, Founding and Senior Pastor of The Fountain of Life Church,
is living his dream, which according to those who knew him as a youngster, was
to ‘make a difference in other people’s lives’. This, it is easy to see, he is
doing by ‘catering to the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of multitudes
all over the world, and using his God-given resources to raise leaders in every
sphere of life.’
Pastor Taiwo (as he is fondly
called), was born on June 15, 1956 in Kaduna. He had his primary and secondary
education at Baptist Primary School, Kaduna and St. Paul’s College Zaria
respectively, before proceeding to the University of Ibadan where he obtained a
degree in petroleum engineering in 1981.
He started work at the NNPC in
April 1982 after the compulsory one-year national youth service during which he
sat on different policy-drafting committees at the corporation and was involved
in the fashioning of some key policies that are still in use in the Nigerian
oil industry today. He retired voluntarily in 1994.
Pastor Taiwo founded The Fountain
of Life Church in 1992 after he was formally released and sent forth, with his
wife of blessed memory, Abimbola, by the presiding Bishop of The Redeemed
Evangelical Mission (TREM) to start a new work. With
a membership of less than 20 at inception, the Church has today become one of
the most influential Pentecostal denominations in the country with a
congregation of over 8,000 at its headquarters, and has nurtured and released
scores of local assemblies across the country. In addition, it has missions in
the United Kingdom, United States of America, Switzerland and South Africa. It
also has missions in Kenya, Central Africa Republic, Republic of Benin, Côte
d’Ivoire, Republic of Benin and Togo.
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| Pastor Mrs Nomthi Odukoya |
Among his initiatives through the church
are: Discovery for Men, an outreach
dedicated to equipping the men folk to fulfill their God-ordained leadership
position; Discovery for Women, an outreach dedicated to equipping the women for
leadership position, and spurring them to actually assume this God-ordained
position; Grace Springs Bible College, a ministry and leadership centre and The
Woman Leader, a non-governmental initiative geared towards unveiling the woman leader.
To make a difference, the initiative is actively involved in mentoring the
woman to mentor other women.
An accomplished author, he has
to his credit over 300 publications including books, articles, seminar papers,
etc. He is married to Simangele Rosemary (popularly known as Pastor Nomthi) and
they live in Lagos together with their children.
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