The BBC is preparing to air a three-part investigative series about the alleged horrors and sexual crimes committed by the late Pastor Temitope Balogun Joshua, also known as TB Joshua.
On June 5, 2021, Joshua died. The BBC interviewed at least 30 former members and workers of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) as part of the inquiry. The documentary's first segment will be released on January 8.
The documentary trilogy uncovered the deceased creator of SCOAN's secret lifestyle, revealing accounts of abuse, harassment, rape, manipulation, and staged miracles. According to BBC sources, the church was aware of the allegations but never investigated them. According to these reports, the sexual crimes were committed during a two-decade period.
A segment of the video reveals how SCOAN kept its congregation from learning the truth regarding the 2014 collapse of one of the church's guesthouses. A video presented to members on Emmanuel TV several times showed a short footage of the structure with what appeared to be an aircraft flying over it.
"On television, they were showing us the building had been bombed," a mother who lost her daughter in the collapsing building told the BBC.
SCOAN is located in the Lagos State neighborhood of Ikotun-Egbe. The church expanded from a small evangelical congregation to a multimillion-dollar congregation with attendees from all over the world.
According to Emmanuel, one of the young men who served TB Joshua, the aircraft story supplied to the members was all a fiction. Emmanuel alleged that the church was structurally deficient.
Rae, a Brit who frequented the church and was a follower, confirmed that the building's foundation was unsuitable for the floors erected on it. She went on to say that despite professional advice, Joshua insisted on raising the building.
"They told us don't tell what you know," Emmanuel, another SCOAN employee, says in the film. "They knew something was wrong with the building but they were managing it."
SCOAN later offered cash compensation to the victims' families, which they viewed as "hush money." According to a church worker who was among those who delivered the funds to victims' relatives in South Africa, TB Joshua requested that she urge the bereaved families not to speak to the media. According to the BBC, Joshua then personally threatened families who declined the money.
"The building collapse exemplifies daily life under TB Joshua." It's just a succession of deceptions. "It's just that this was so big that he couldn't make it go away," Rae explained.
According to the BBC, individuals were dismembered under the debris and dead bodies were transferred in SCOAN ambulances to hide the reality of the disaster from the press in order to protect both the church's and TB Joshua's image.
Survivors of TB Joshua's sexual exploitation described how they were misled and silenced, even though they were aware that their relationship with "daddy" was violent. These ladies were devotees of TB Joshua. Several ladies described how he molested and assaulted them. One of the ladies who first resisted his assault said she was threatened into surrender.
All of the women claimed that TB Joshua told them he was sexually abusing them for their salvation. These women joined the synagogue as youngsters and stayed for years before departing. Abisola, a lady, stated that she was raped throughout her 14-year tenure at the church. When the women became pregnant as a result of being raped numerous times, they were forced to have abortions at a filthy clinic inside the synagogue.
"When we entered his room, I stood there. He shouted 'off your clothes,' so I took them off, and he just motioned at me to lie down, and then he raped me. He ruined my virginity. I was yelling, and he was whispering in my ear that I needed to stop acting like a baby. I was 17 years old at the time. "I was underage," one of the ladies said.
After escaping, one of the survivors confronted TB Joshua. She documented the meeting in footage that she later shared with the BBC. A security officer can be heard threatening to shoot at the lady in the video. Thugs suspected of working for the preacher, according to survivors, targeted, beaten, and fired at them.
The BBC documentary uncovered how the church faked and embellished broadcast miracles. People were urged to exaggerate their issues in order to be healed, and to exaggerate their healing in order for it to be "perfected by God," a source in the miracle department told the BBC.
"You've got this man who pretended to be a father with many children before raping, abusing, and molesting all these people who call him daddy." "How is someone like that allowed to walk free?" Rae wondered. Rachel joined the church at the age of 17 in the hopes of being cured of her homosexuality.
Another aspect of the study focused on how TB Joshua mistreated and isolated his unwed daughter. Ajoke, now 28, told the BBC how she confronted her father about sexual assault claims and was subsequently booted out of the church. She described how she was secluded and brainwashed. Ajoke stated that she had considered suicide.
"The disciples dragged me out of the office," she recalled when she faced her father. "Isolate me from the rest of the church by locking me in a room." I'm not sure how I got through that period when they were striking me with belts and chains... For days, I couldn't take a shower. He was doing everything he could to keep people from listening to me. He was alarmed that I was aware of what was going on."
The BBC will broadcast the documentary for three weeks in a row.
According to SaharaReporters, Chris Okotie, Senior Pastor of the Household of God Church International Ministries, labeled the late TB Joshua as a magician who disguised himself as a minister of God in August 2021.
In a viral video, Okotie claimed that God never called the famed Nigerian prophet into the gospel ministry.
"What is the truth about TB Joshua?" he said in the video. What was his name? Was he raised in a Christian home? Or are you a shamanic practitioner? Was he a disciple of the Lord Jesus? Or an itinerant religious healer?
"Was he a genuine prophet misunderstood? Or a hypocrite cloaked in the habiliment of the Faith?
"When God begins a work in scripture, especially in the Old Testament, he begins with patterns, types, and shadows."
"You ask why, because patterns govern the flow of power and the authenticity of that enterprise." He is a sorcerer and a magician who styles himself a prophet."
Swipe to view the video below.
In March 2023, Mail Online revealed that Constance Marten, an aristocrat who fled for manslaughter, was supposedly 'groomed' as a teenager by TB Joshua, the leader of a Nigerian sect.
Marten, 35, who was charged with manslaughter by gross neglect of her infant 'Victoria' with her partner Mark Gordon as a teen, spent six months in a camp near Lagos, Nigeria.
According to the article, she was forced to reside in a dormitory of 50 girls who were watched over by armed guards, malnourished, awoke for biblical readings, and compelled to call the leader 'daddy'.
Marten and Gordon were captured and held following the end of a seven-week manhunt for them and their child, ahead of a hearing at the Old Bailey later in March 2023 about their participation in Victoria's death.
Marten, who grew up on a £100 million estate in Dorset and whose grandmother was the late Queen Mother's goddaughter, was thought to have visited Nigeria while she was in her teens.
She joined the Synagogue, Church of All Nations (SCOAN) in Lagos.
Joe Hurst, a former British soldier who joined the group but left before Marten arrived in 2006, said she spoke to him years later to tell she and other white people at the facility were humiliated by the controversial pastor.
Mr Hurst told The Independent that she was forced to eat Joshua's leftovers and was placed in social exile - a punishment meted out to members who were not 'focused enough' on the pastor or who spoke about their lives before entering the complex.
He went on to say that when she heard what transpired in the complex, she asked, "How could God allow this to happen to us?"
Author Matthew McNaught stated she approached him several years later because she was "trying to get her head around what happened to her," adding that "she was confused and traumatised."
In April 2021, YouTube suspended his station, Emmanuel TV, when he claimed homosexuality was caused by demonic possession.
Marten's ex-partner Francis Agolo, 44, told The Sun that the experience in Nigeria was "traumatic" for her, adding that "she (Marten) would clam up when talking about her time there."
"When I knew Constance, she was caring and loving," he remarked. It appears to be out of character."
Marten previously spoke up about her ordeal in an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine, revealing that she was one of 50 females who shared a dormitory in a religious cult.
"The leader looked me in the eyes and said, 'Your family doesn't matter anymore,'" she continued. 'I am now your father.'"