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TB Joshua: Nigeria’s most famous evangelical leader accused of sexual abuse [1]

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Date: 2024-02 

Nigeria’s most prominent Christian televangelist – and one of its most controversial – physically and sexually abused at least a dozen of his top disciples who had joined his ministry in Lagos from multiple countries and continents, according to a two-year investigation by BBC Africa Eye, in partnership with openDemocracy.

This pattern of historic sexual abuse by Temitope Balogun Joshua – or TB Joshua as he is commonly known to tens of thousands of Pentecostal Christians – is among the troubling revelations into the man who founded and led the Lagos-based Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) until his death in 2021.

Other allegations made by former senior members of the church include:

How Joshua groomed women disciples into sexual abuse through the use of warped religious teachings, social isolation, physical violence, blackmail and sleep deprivation.

How people who refused Joshua’s sexual advances faced solitary confinement and torture at the church compound where senior leaders lived and worked.

How leading church figures committed fraud by faking miracles, including people paid by the church to display fake illnesses.

openDemocracy first looked into allegations of abuse by TB Joshua in 2021. A resulting story about how the pastor weaponised homophobic teachings to promote fake cures for what he called the “demon” of homosexuality resulted in YouTube shutting down his Emmanuel TV channel, which was then the main platform that the church had to reach its global audience.

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Since then, whistleblowers and abuse survivors from the church have come forward to BBC Africa Eye and oD. The resulting three-hour documentary can be seen here.

openDemocracy will be reporting and publishing additional stories about these topics.

If you are a current or former member of SCOAN or any other cult group, you can find signposting for resources and support here.

To share your story, please contact openDemocracy’s senior global investigations editor at [email protected]

If you would like to keep up to date with openDemocracy’s reporting on the church and its legacy, sign up to our WhatsApp group

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/tb-joshua-nigeria-christian-evangelical-leader-accused-sexual-abuse/

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