It is ironic that in one week a convergence of allegations has most likely exposed scams and abuses that have robbed people of hope. One was the serious allegations against the late TB Joshua and the other was about the misappropriation at the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs. Both are still allegations inviting thorough scrutiny and investigations.
The victims of both cases are vulnerable people; the ones who turn to the churches for hope and miracles and the ones who look to the government for hope and succour. Yet in both scandals, the one in the house of faith and the one in the house of renewed hope, there is a series of convergences that have enabled both the exploitation of the faithful and the hopeful.
When TB Joshua died suddenly in 2021, it would seem that he had got away with some of the allegations that had plagued his years in the “vineyard of the Lord.” Until the three-part BBC documentary “Disciples: The Cult of TB Joshua.” Put those claims front and centre as has never happened before. Millions have watched the detailed and graphic allegations made against him, including verbal and physical torture, hundreds of cases of sexual abuse and misconduct, the rape of at least one minor, and revelations that would lend credence to his culpability in the deaths of 116 people in the 2014 guest house building collapse. There are also details of attempts to cover up these culpabilities.
These allegations were made by the victims and were sufficiently corroborated by eyewitnesses and former church employees and his own daughter.
Most of these allegations are not new. In 2017, one of his church employees, Bisola Johnson, published a book, ‘The TB Joshua I Know: Deception of the Age Unmasked’, in which she accused the pastor of raping her and other women. In a 2019 interview, she repeated the claims. On his radio show in the mid-1990s, a journalist, Kola Olawuyi, had documented allegations of abuse against TB Joshua, and as far back as 2001, Treasure Magazine did a special, also chronicling allegations of abuse, bondage, and slavery in his church.
In 2010, the Cameroonian government barred him from visiting the country and advised its citizens against travelling to Nigeria for his miracles because, in their words, he was “diabolical” and “a sham”. Yet, the man got away with the allegations while cavorting with presidents and politicians and was eventually decorated with a national merit award. How did he get away with these for so long?
The answer is both simple and complex. Nigerians, and Africans generally, have often displayed an incredible gullibility for miracles, the quick fix. Every con man with half a brain and the requisite diabolism needs to know how to put up a smoke screen, package a “miracle,” and milk the crowd that would soon gather at his feet. Even some alfas have seen the prospect in the trade for hope and have set up shop as Muslim miracle workers. In November, a video surfaced of an alfa trying, and failing abysmally, to perform an evangelical-styled miracle on a disabled young woman to the accompaniment of music and singing by his hijab-wearing congregants. The poor disabled woman was made to hobble around the hall even when it was clear she was in severe pain. There have also been videos of a hijab-wearing woman who screams at her customers, and pushes them violently around in the guise of prayers and healing while her congregation chant Allahu akbar as her victims fall to the ground.
The business of selling hope is lucrative. Desperate people in need of a lifeline invest their faith in men and women who claim to be of God, making themselves susceptible to abuses. If your faith in God is wholesome, why would you need any miracle as proof?
It is safe to say that Nigeria is suffering from a crisis of naivety. Exploitative religious charlatans have made advertising ignorance and gullibility fashionable and through that have created an army of Voltrons who automatically activate in their defence and often fail to see the evident wrongdoings of these men and women. So, the gullibility that allowed the institution of the systems of abuse, extortion and deception has also continued to sustain that culture.
For instance, the first response of some people has been to claim, as TB Joshua himself and every other pastor who has been outed has done, that this is a “spiritual attack” on a “man of God”. Some puerile retorts have questioned the BBC’s right to report this story. It is interesting to note that their concerns were not about the veracity of the allegations but about who has the right to tell them. This is diversionary and will have us asking the wrong questions and ending up with the wrong answers.
Yet, some of the same people defending TB Joshua, do so while hammering the nails on the cross of Betta Edu and the government that appointed her as minister. From her, they demand accountability, from him, even if dead, they demand unquestioned loyalty and confer infallibility. We question the immunity of political officeholders and armed with verses like “touch not my anointed,” confer unbridled immunity to those who proclaim themselves God’s representative on earth. If God’s power is greater than politics, shouldn’t workers in his vineyard be held to greater accountability?
In both cases, our subjectivities have allowed allegations of abuse and looting to often go unchecked. Betta Edu has had her own share of fanatical Voltrons; those who claim she is a woman or from the Niger Delta and therefore should not be touched.
While it is a shame that such a scandal is happening at all, in Nigeria, and this government that promised ‘renewed hope’, it is commendable that the president acted promptly to suspend the minister and the head of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA), Mrs Halima Shehu, pending the conclusion of investigations into the claims against them. These are early days in this administration and the handling of this situation will set the bar for how he deals with subsequent corruption accusations. We are witnesses to how the previous government’s failure to address the 2015 budget padding scandal derailed any anti-corruption claim it had made.
In the same vein, investigations have to be made to verify the allegations against TB Joshua because these claims also indict the Nigerian government and the Nigerian police.
Some members of the church who escaped his clutches filed police reports about the abuse he subjected them to. Nothing was done. Worse is that there were police officers on the payroll of TB Joshua, as is the case with a lot of pastors who, armed with state-issued weapons, did not offer protection to the victims but became their prisoners and enablers of their abuse. They allegedly manned the gates to prevent escape and were often used to threaten and intimidate the victims. We saw them in videos, and we have all seen them in real life. A police force for hire! These are claims the police must address and not just debunk but take measures to ensure the force and its personnel are not used for such purposes.
On the other hand, the Nigerian system failed the 116 people who died in the 2014 building collapse of the church’s guest house. While investigations found that he had questions to answer in court, as confirmed by the then Deputy Director of Public Affairs in the Lagos State Ministry of Justice Bola Akingbade, he never had his day in court. And the Nigerian state stood by and let him get away with it.
Both the church and the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs are supposed to cater to the most vulnerable in society. The fact that both have been allowed to create and sustain a culture of exploitation and get away with it says a lot about our system and the place of the vulnerable in it. This seems like a great opportunity to change that narrative.
