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TB Joshua: BBC Report Lists Six Mind-blowing Ways Late Church Leader Faked Miracles

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3 months ago

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A BBC Africa Eye report has insisted that the late Nigerian televangelist, TB Joshua faked miracles within his Synagogue Church of All Nations.

BBC in the report stated that it had uncovered a web of deceptive practices allegedly employed by the late Nigerian televangelist to fabricate miracles and listed six ways the late church leader allegedly faked miracles

It noted that the investigation, which draws insights from more than 25 insiders across various countries, sheds light on a series of deceptive tactics employed within SCOAN.

The investigation, which was published on BBC Eye Website on Sunday, alleged that Joshua, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 57, was a fraud.

It details six ways through which TB Joshua allegedly deceived worshippers, noting that these discoveries came from those who worked with the late church leader.

In 2004, Nigeria’s broadcast regulator prohibited the airing of pastors’ supposed miracles on live terrestrial TV, leading Joshua to launch Emmanuel TV on satellite and later online.

His global television and social media network became one of the world’s most successful Christian platforms, broadcasting to millions across Europe, the Americas, South East Asia, and Africa. His YouTube channel garnered hundreds of millions of views.

Below are the six ways listed by the BBC Africa Eye in its report:

“1: The emergency department: An exclusive section of the church, named the “emergency department”, was responsible for making the so-called miracles look real.

“This is where the sick, who came to be healed, would be screened, and where the team would decide who should be filmed and prayed for by Joshua.

“Agomoh Paul, who supervised the department for 10 years – receiving direct instructions from Joshua, told the BBC that the team was “trained by medical doctors”.

“He is a former disciple – one of an elite group of dedicated followers who lived with the pastor inside the Scoan compound.

“Any cancerous situation, they send them away. Then, people who had normal open wounds that can heal, they bring them in, to present as cancer,” he says.

“Only a select group of trusted disciples were allowed to work in the emergency department. They would write placards for each follower to hold, detailing their made-up or exaggerated ailments. When it was time to meet Joshua, they would stand in line in front of the cameras and be “healed”.

READ ALSO: BBC Investigation Reveals TB Joshua Raped, Tortured Members

“It was a complicated system. Not all disciples knew what was happening. It was a secret,” Mr Paul says.

“2: Drugs: Every foreign visitor who came to the church to be healed had to fill out a medical report, detailing their illness and the medication they were currently prescribed.

“They would be told to stop taking them, but Joshua would order pharmacists to procure the same medicine.

“Without their knowledge, they would “put those drugs in their fruit drinks,” explains Mr Paul, who said people would be urged to drink the cocktail that had been blessed by Joshua.

“This meant while visitors were residing at SCOAN, they would not become unwell and would believe in the divine healing powers of their pastor.

“In the 1990s when HIV/AIDs had reached epidemic levels across parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Joshua told visitors to stop taking their antiretroviral medication when they returned home.

“I know people died because they didn’t take their medicine, and it’s difficult to live with that,” admits a former disciple, who asked not to be named.

“Tash Ford, now 49, who went to Lagos from the South African city of Johannesburg in 2001 in the hope of having her failing kidney healed, was told to stop taking her drugs.

“It was the promise that… you could supernaturally receive a new kidney,” she told the BBC.

“At the time she had already had two kidney transplants. Ms Ford says the disciples said: “Stop taking your medication and just believe.”

‘She did believe she had been healed. But when she got home, after four weeks of not taking her medicine, she went into renal failure and was admitted to hospital.

“The medics initially managed to save her kidney but eventually it stopped working and she had to have kidney dialysis for more than six years before having a third transplant in 2011.”

READ ALSO: How TB Joshua Made Childless Couples To Exchange Spouses – Ex-worker Reveals

“3: Brainwashing: Ms Ford says when she was at Scoan she never had any doubts: “I honestly thought we were seeing miracles. I literally couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I saw someone walk out of a wheelchair.”

“The theatricality seemed to draw everyone in.

“The former disciple told the BBC that after being screened, the chosen followers would be told to “exaggerate their problems so that God can heal you and exaggerate your healing”.

“The people, themselves, are clearly being manipulated,” she says.

“The church had a ready supply of wheelchairs which followers were coaxed to use. They were warned they would not be healed unless they sat in one when they met Joshua.

“We are telling them: ‘If you come out there, and walk with your legs, Papa will not pray for you. You need to shout: “Man of God, help me, I cannot walk,” says Mr Paul.

“Another former disciple, Bisola, who spent 14 years living at Scoan, accompanied Joshua on his National Healing Campaign at the Church of Our Saviour in Singapore in 2006.

“She says she saw people in wheelchairs try to stand up after the pastor told the congregation “he had released faith into the stadium”.

“However, these people had not been screened and she saw them fall down. “I was crying. I was crying for them,” she says.

“The emergency department workers themselves were also being manipulated. They were subjected to horrifying ordeals, including rape, physical violence, and torture, and lived by a strict set of rules – forbidden to sleep for more than a few hours at a time.

“Now they struggle to understand how and why they continued to follow the pastor’s orders.

“TB Joshua told me: ‘Don’t worry, we use this thing to build people’s faith in Christ.’ I wasn’t having in mind that I was actually doing something wrong. I thought I was doing something that would help to build the faith of people in the church,” says Mr Paul.

“For Ms Ford, it has meant she has lost all faith in organised religion: “I wish we had known that it was all a farce, that it wasn’t true. I was manipulated into believing that what the prophet was doing was supernatural, miracles, wonders, signs.”

“4: Bribes: Some disciples allege they were charged with finding people who needed money to pretend to be sick.

“When they performed healing crusades in countries outside Nigeria, they would go to the poorer areas of a city to search for people living in poverty.

READ ALSO: TB Joshua: 12 Things To Know About A Church Leader Still Controversial After Death

“We would say: ‘We need you to just act out this particular scene and we will pay you,’” another former disciple told the BBC.

“We get them into hotels, we get them cleaned up. They come, they do what they do. We give them their money and the rest is history,” she says.

“Before the service, they would tell Joshua which rows they had planted these people, and what clothes they were wearing, so he would know who to perform his supposed miracles on.

“People would be brought in just to pretend that they were healed,” she says.

‘5: Fake medical certificates: The “healing miracles” broadcast to millions regularly included medical reports stating people had been cured of HIV/Aids and diseases like cancer.

“Doctors were interviewed on camera confirming the cures.

“In 2000 Nigerian journalist Adejuwon Soyinka reported that these medical certificates were fake, but Joshua quashed his investigation and it went nowhere.

“To this day some people believe they were healed, but insiders say it was all a performance on the late preacher’s part.

“The whole thing is stage-managed and faked. It’s faked,” says Mr Paul, describing Joshua as an “evil genius”.

“There was nothing that took place in the compound that Joshua did not know about”, he explains.

“TB Joshua was the one who masterminded the whole manipulation,” he says.

“6: Video manipulation: The “miracles” were filmed and then edited to make it look like the supposed healing had happened instantaneously. Before and after footage was spliced together to show his purported miraculous powers, but in reality the films were shot months, or even a year, apart.

“All you see on TV is the before and after, you don’t know the time-space,” says Bisola, who was Scoan’s chief video editor for five years and worked on Emmanuel TV. Like other insiders interviewed by the BBC, she opted to only use her first name.

“What people see… is not real. It is a fraud,” she says about the clips and broadcasts she oversaw.

“I am speaking now as someone who was an insider,” she says.

“Anything they did not want viewers to see was “cut away”. It was all “organised”, she says.

BBC Africa reached out to SCOAN with the allegations but received no response, although the church denied previous claims against Joshua, stating, “Making unfounded allegations against Prophet TB Joshua is not a new occurrence… None of the allegations was ever substantiated.”
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Sad Story: Nigerian Who Relocated To UK In 2022 Beat Wife To Death With Skateboard

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19 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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A United Kingdom-based Nigerian man, Olubunmi Abodunde, has beaten his wife, Taiwo, to death with their son’s skateboard, Daily Mail reports.

The couple, who had three children, arrived in the UK from Nigeria in 2022 and always clashed over alleged affairs and arguments about bills.

According to the news platform, 48-year-old Abodunde had been repeatedly investigated by Suffolk Police about domestic violence and was due to go on trial for murder but changed his plea to guilty on Wednesday after a jury had been sworn in.

During the abuse, officers heard ‘a number of bangs’ inside the house, which Abodunde had gone into, despite bail conditions imposed the day before that banned him from the property following another violent episode.

When they finally entered 25 minutes later, they found the wife, 41-year-old Taiwo, with her ‘skull smashed in’.

However, Judge Martyn Levett, sitting at Ipswich Crown Court, warned him the only possible sentence was life imprisonment.

READ ALSO: Suspect Arrested Over Murder Of British-Nigerian Man In London

Suffolk Constabulary has referred itself to the Independent Office of Police Conduct, which confirmed three officers were under investigation.

An IOPC spokesman said, “We advised two Suffolk officers that they are under investigation for potential breaches of the police standards of professional behaviour at the level of gross misconduct.

“We advised another officer that they are under investigation at the level of misconduct.”

Abodunde had a history of jealousy and suspicion and accused his wife of having affairs. He had been investigated by police a number of times over alleged domestic violence incidents before his wife’s death.

He was arrested on April 27 last year when police arrived at the couple’s home in Newmarket, Suffolk, and found Mrs Abodunde with a split lip.

Later that day, he was freed on police bail with the condition that he stayed away from the marital home and didn’t approach his wife.

READ ALSO: JUST IN: Four-year-old Boy Dies In Abuja School, Parents Suspect Foul Play

But after working a night shift at Tesco, he went home just after 9 am to allegedly pick up his mobile phone.

Two officers arrived at 9.20 am to take a statement from Mrs Abodunde about the previous night’s incident and heard repeated banging noises inside.

But it wasn’t until 9.55 am that they forced their way in after getting approval from senior officers and found Mrs Abodunde ‘obviously dead’ near the front door.

A post-mortem examination later showed she had been throttled until she fell unconscious, then stamped on until her ribs were broken before her husband used the skateboard to finish her off. The blows were so violent that the skateboard was damaged.

Prosecutor Simon Spence KC told the court the banging officers heard was likely to have been Abodunde continuing to attack his wife after she was unconscious or dead.

READ ALSO: LIST: 25 Countries Where TikTok Is Banned

Mrs Abodunde had a job as a care home assistant in Cambridge, but her husband, who had trained as a civil engineer, was unable to find work in his profession and took shifts at Tesco and Wickes.

After his arrest for the murder, Abodunde was taken to hospital “because he appeared to have some sort of mental episode”.

He later claimed in a police statement he had acted in self-defence, saying, “My wife has subjected me to physical abuse for a number of years.

“On November 28, we got into an argument. She ran at me with a knife, I grabbed the knife and cut my hand. I was defending myself.”

But the court heard while he did have an injury to his hand, there wasn’t a knife near his wife’s body.

Nneka Akudolu KC, defending, said the level of violence was ‘completely out of character’ for her client and might have been affected by medication he was taking. But she said no medical evidence would be provided to support this claim.

READ ALSO: UK Varsity Offers Nigerians N44m Scholarships

Detective Inspector Dan Connick, of Suffolk Police, said after the hearing, “This was an awful attack on a woman that has had a lasting impact on the community and, most importantly, on the victim’s family.

‘We are pleased that Taiwo’s family will no longer have to go through the pain of a trial.

‘Our thoughts remain with Taiwo’s family and friends and hope this result will bring some small comfort to them.’

Taiwo Abodunde worked for Cambridge Manor Care Home, which provides dementia care and residential and respite care.

A spokesman for the facility, which is owned by TLC Care, said: ‘We are all deeply shaken and upset by the tragic death of Taiwo, who was a much-loved member of our home community.

‘Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with her family. Taiwo always cared for those we support with compassion and kindness, and she will be greatly missed by all of us and our residents.’

Abodunde was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on May 9.

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GWR: Ghanian Student Sets New Record For Hugging 1,123 Trees In One Hour

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22 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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A 29-year-old Ghanaian environmental activist and forestry student, Abubakar Tahiru, has etched his name in the Guinness Book of World Records by hugging 1,123 trees in one hour.

The Guinness World Record announced this on Friday, adding that Tahiru’s accomplishment not only makes him the record holder but also the first person to ever hold this title as he “easily surpassed the minimum requirement of 700.”

The event was said to have taken place at the Tuskegee National Forest in Alabama, USA, where he embraced nearly 19 trees per minute.

According to GWR, Tahiru grew up in a farming community in Tepa, Ghana, where he developed a keen interest in nature and its conservation.

After completing his undergraduate degree specialising in forestry at one of Ghana’s top universities, he moved to Alabama last year to begin his master’s degree in forestry at Auburn University.

Describing the challenge, GWR disclosed that a successful tree hug is defined as both arms wrapped around a tree in a close embrace. No tree may be hugged more than once, and no damage can be caused to any tree, or else the attempt is disqualified.

It further stated that Tahiru attempted this challenge while he was fasting during Ramadan, preventing him from drinking water despite the strenuous activity.

He also had to move quickly between trees while ensuring that each hug met the required standards.

Speaking with GWR, Tahiru said, “Not being able to drink water throughout the attempt posed a significant challenge, especially given the physical exertion required.

“However, this also proved to be helpful in a way, as there was no need to pause for water breaks, allowing me to continue the attempt uninterrupted from start to finish.

“Achieving this world record feels incredibly rewarding.”

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LIST: 25 Countries Where TikTok Is Banned

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23 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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United States President Joe Biden recently signed a bill that could potentially result in the ban of TikTok in the US if its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, fails to sell it within a year.

US lawmakers are concerned about the potential national security risks associated with the app, particularly if the Chinese government were to gain access to the data it collects.

Many countries have taken action to limit or ban TikTok, citing worries about privacy, security, or ethical issues.

Different approaches have been taken by various countries, with some implementing comprehensive restrictions and others focusing on particular features of the app or a partial ban on government devices.

Here is a list of countries that have implemented various forms of restrictions:

Countries with a complete ban

China

TikTok’s international version is not accessible within China. Instead, users are required to download Douyin, the Chinese counterpart of TikTok, which is subject to strict content control by the Chinese Communist Party.

Senegal

Senegal implemented a complete ban on the application following allegations that an opposition candidate had utilised the platform to disseminate “hateful and subversive messages.” The Senegalese government has declined to restore the app until a system is created that enables them to delete individual accounts.

Somalia

The Somali government officially outlawed TikTok, Telegram, and 1XBet, an online betting platform, in August 2023.

READ ALSO: UK Varsity Offers Nigerians N44m Scholarships

North Korea

Access to the internet is heavily restricted for the majority of North Korean citizens. While a select few websites and apps are allowed for the privileged elite, TikTok is not included in this list.

Afghanistan

In April 2022, the Taliban government decided to ban TikTok, citing concerns about its influence on young people.

India

India banned TikTok in 2020, including on personal devices, following a border clash between China and India in 2020. The ban was prompted by concerns about data theft and the government’s claim that certain apps were stealing. Many creators migrated to YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.

Iran

TikTok, along with other globally popular social media platforms like X and Facebook, has been banned by the Islamic Republic.

Uzbekistan

Since July 2021, TikTok has been inaccessible in Uzbekistan due to the authorities’ claim that the app does not adhere to the country’s personal data protection laws.

Countries with a partial ban on TikTok

Indonesia

In October 2023, Indonesia took action against TikTok Shop, a feature of the app that enables creators to sell products to their followers, due to its violation of the country’s e-commerce laws.

READ ALSO: Again, FG Talks Tough, Threatens To Revoke Lokoja-Benin Road Contract

Kyrgyzstan

In August 2023, the small country, which was once part of the Soviet Union, decided to ban TikTok. The government justified this action by stating that the application harmed the growth and well-being of children.

Russia

There are limitations on the content that Russians can access on TikTok, resulting in a primary focus on videos created by Russian users. Recent reports indicate that the Russian government is planning to prohibit the use of TikTok, to promote the adoption of local social media platforms among its citizens.

Countries with bans on government-owned devices

In April 2023, the Australian government decided to ban TikTok on their devices. However, it remains accessible on devices owned by the general public.

Austria

In May 2023, TikTok was banned on all devices used by government employees in Austria.

Canada

On February 28, Canada banned the use of TikTok on all devices provided by the government because of concerns regarding privacy and security.

Denmark

In March 2023, Denmark’s Ministry of Defence decided to ban the use of the app on its employees’ work phones. Additionally, the country’s main public service broadcaster implemented specific protocols, requiring journalists to obtain special approval before using the app for reporting purposes. This action was taken in response to a warning from Denmark’s Centre for Cybersecurity.

Estonia

In March 2023, the use of TikTok on the work phones of state officials in Estonia was banned.

European Union

Employees of the European Parliament, European Commission, and E.U. Council are no longer allowed to have TikTok on their work phones, as the three main institutions of the E.U. implemented a ban.

France

In March of 2023, France banned the use of Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok on government employees’ mobile devices.

READ ALSO: Outrage Over TikTok Videos Of Cash-flaunting Bandits

United Kingdom

In March 2023, the U.K. banned all government employees from using TikTok on government-provided mobile devices.

United States

The US military and US Congress have both taken action to block access to TikTok on all of their personnel’s devices.

Nearly half of the states have outright banned the app on state-owned devices, and in March 2023, the federal government followed suit.

Ireland

In April 2023, the Irish government implemented a ban on TikTok for use on government devices.

Belgium

The Belgian government announced in March 2024 the ban of the app on all government devices. TikTok remains accessible on devices not associated with government entities.

Taiwan

In December 2022, Taiwan implemented a ban on the usage of Chinese-made software, including TikTok, on all government devices. This decision came after a warning from the FBI.

Latvia

The Latvian Foreign Ministry banned the app from official company phones in March 2023.

Malta

In Malta, government-provided cell phones have restricted access to TikTok and other non-government applications.

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