TB Joshua. — © AFP
He made the paralyzed walk again and is even said to have brought someone back from the dead. More than two years after his death, it was exposed how Nigerian televangelist TB Joshua staged his “miracles” and lured millions of people to his church.
Sunday January 14, 2024 at 4:46 PM
Temitope Balogun Joshua, who died in 2021 at the age of 57, founded his Synagogue Church of All Nations, simply called Scoan, in Lagos, Nigeria, more than thirty years ago. In no time, the preacher attracted millions of believers to his church, a meteoric rise that was credited to his self-proclaimed divine powers and his supposed ability to heal the sick and make the paralyzed walk again.
His theatrical healings, which reportedly even brought someone back from the dead, were filmed and the footage was then sent to churches around the world. His empire grew into one of the most successful Christian networks in the world, millions of people in Europe, America, Southeast Asia and Africa followed all his alleged miracles, his YouTube channel received hundreds of millions of views.
But Joshua was a fraud. Now he is accused of sexually abusing and abusing believers – including children – for almost twenty years. Large-scale investigation by the British public broadcaster BBC has now exposed how the preacher managed to mislead his followers all these years.
The Emergency Department: An exclusive department of Scoan, responsible for making the so-called miracles seem real. Here the sick who came to be healed were first screened. The department, consisting of a small group of confidants, decided who would be filmed. “Every cancer patient was sent away,” says former department head Agomoh Paul. “People with normal open wounds were brought in and presented as cancer patients.” Medicines: every foreign visitor who came to the church to be healed had to fill out a medical report and say, among other things, which medicines they were receiving at that time. They were then told to stop taking that medication, although Joshua would order pharmacists to purchase the same drug that was put into the patients’ “fruit drinks” without their knowledge. Brainwashing: Tash Ford, a now 49-year-old woman who moved to Lagos from South Africa in 2001 in the hope of healing her failing kidney, was told to stop taking her medication. For a moment she truly believed she had been cured, until a few weeks later she developed kidney failure again. “I never had any doubts, I really thought we were seeing miracles and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I saw someone get up from a wheelchair and walk. But we were clearly manipulated. The chosen followers were also told to greatly exaggerate their problems.” Bribes: Some disciples have now testified that they paid people to pretend they were sick. When they had to perform healings in countries outside Nigeria, they went to the poorer parts of a city to find people who would stage something in exchange for a few cents. Fake medical certificates: the “miracles” broadcast to millions of people regularly contained medical reports stating that the patients had been cured of diseases such as cancer. Doctors were even interviewed on camera to confirm the recoveries. But as early as 2000, a Nigerian journalist reported that the medical certificates were fake. “Everything was staged by the evil genius Joshua,” said Agomoh Paul.Video manipulation: the “miracles” were edited to make it seem as if the supposed healing had taken place immediately, but in reality the videos were recorded months or even a year apart .