How Rivers pastor who ‘cancelled’ wedding over lateness died one year after wife’s death
Essa Ogorry, Founder and Lead Pastor of Fulfilling-Word Foundation Church based in Rivers State, is dead, The PUNCH has learnt.
He died on Tuesday at the age of 55, a member of staff in the church, who did not want to be mentioned, told The PUNCH.
Ogorry died exactly a year after his wife, Tonyemieba, passed on. The departed couple left a 17-year-old child.
The late Rivers-based preacher went viral recently for refusing to join an intending couple over their lateness to the wedding service.
The source close to Ogorry said, “My pastor has gone on to be with the Lord. He had health issues even before the wedding saga. We took him to the hospital and he had to come from Lagos to attend the wedding.
“He tried to preach the Sunday after the wedding but he was not in his normal strength. He went back to the hospital and he gave up yesterday (Tuesday) morning.”
“He celebrated his 55th birthday on February 9, last week. He lost his wife last year, on February 16, 2020, the same date,” the source added.
Speaking on the ‘cancelled’ wedding, the source said the groom and the bride signed a document that the pastor has the right not to join them together as husband and wife if they come late on the wedding day.
Describing the late preacher as a “father, a perfectionist and a disciplinarian”, the source said the viral ‘cancelled’ wedding which occurred on February 6, 2021, was not the first of such but added that the late preacher usually did join intending couples later on the same day after entreaties. The source noted that the February 6 incident was different as the groom rained insults on the pastor.
The source said, “He (Ogorry) came that day and waited for five minutes. Before the day, he did interviews with the intending couple and he told them not to allow him look bad in the face of the congregation because that kind of thing had happened before when intending couples come so late and all the members will be waiting for them. Punch
