Popular cleric and founder of Power City International, Abel Damina, has rejected the belief that tithing leads to financial prosperity, stating that no biblical passage promises wealth in return for giving to God.
In a video shared on Monday by X user #ChuksEricE, Damina criticised what he described as a misleading and unscriptural doctrine that has been intentionally promoted within Nigerian churches.
He argued that this mindset conditions worshippers to equate financial success with the amount they give to pastors and religious institutions.
“There’s no scripture in the Bible that says when you give to God, you’ll be a rich person. There’s no such scripture. Nobody prospers by giving. When you give, you lack. Because when you give, it leaves you and there’s vacuum. Then you have to work again and give it time to recover what you gave. And sometimes you never recover it,” he said.
To illustrate his point, the preacher recounted an encounter with a man who had donated all three of his cars to his church in expectation of divine financial returns, only to be left without any.
“Somebody told me he gave to his church all his three cars and he has been trekking since then till when I met him. He said, I was thinking of going back to collect one. I said, I think so too. Because if you gave three and the only one you want to collect is one out of the three, you try. You’re never asking for the three,” Damina said.
The pastor, known in recent years for his unconventional theological views, maintained that the notion that tithing produces billionaires lacks evidence, insisting instead that wealth comes from education, hard work, and enterprise—not religious giving.
“I never saw anybody who, because he tithed, became a billionaire. Even those who said they became billionaires because they tithed — it’s because they don’t know. It’s because they had jobs and businesses. That’s why they became billionaires. Not because they tithed,” he stated.
Damina further argued that God’s blessings are not transactional but already embedded within the earth, adding that individuals must position themselves through knowledge and effort to access these resources.
“The reason why people can excavate the ground and meet oil wells is because God put the deposit. The reason why we can get to the rocks in Nigeria, go to the gold belt that travels right through Minna, Niger and right to Plateau, all those rocks, explore, break the ground and meet diamonds, golds, sapphires and tourmaline is because God put them there,” he said.
“So because God has blessed the planet, all we need to do is go to school, learn what to do to get into what has been blessed and turn it into commercial property. We go to school, we go to market, we engage to make money,” he added.
Watch the video below 👇🏼