Escape from TB Joshua
When I came back to Africa after spending 10 years in the US, I found that my mother had become deeply religious. Not the traditional Methodist church that we had both been raised in, but she followed these charismatic tele-evangelists. I had to ask because she had always been a fun, young mum (she had me when she was 18) and she said that life in Zimbabwe has been so hard during the hyperinflation era that you either found religion, became an alcoholic or you went crazy. She chose religion. The TV in her bedroom was always turned to this channel called Emmanuel TV and it was the first time I heard of TB Joshua. In my mind, he was a Nigerian TD Jakes wannabe but if it made her happy, so be it. In April 2009 I visited Nigeria for the first time with my workmates from Eskom South Africa. My colleague has asked me to organize a trip over Easter as she had been wanting to visit Lagos and I knew a lot of Nigerian people from my New York days. She was also a follower of Christ Embassy, another Nigerian church led by Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, which now has branches all over the world and holds a big annual convention in Lagos towards the end of the year. A lot of people are afraid of Nigerians' reputation as scammers so even though they might want to visit Nigeria, they do not know what to expect. My first trip to Nigeria was such a pleasant experience that I came back to South Africa and raved about it.
In the early days, my mother would watch regular TV shows like ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians' in the living room then retire to bed with her Christian channels but eventually all she watched were those tele-evangelists. I was confused by all of it but if something makes your parents happy and it is not harming them, you leave it alone. At some point, mum then said to me, ‘Debbie, I want to go to Nigeria to visit TB Joshua's church, Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN). You know Nigeria, can you go with me?' What else could I say but yes? She wanted to stay at the church, but SCOAN said that we should have booked well in advance, so I booked the Protea Hotel in Ikeja and off we went to Lagos in November 2009. SCOAN was located in Mainland Lagos, and we took a taxi from the hotel for the long drive to the compound. The buildings inside the walls had a makeshift quality about them, as they were poorly constructed, and I was not surprised to hear about the building collapse a few years later. Nothing much was happening on the first day, which was a Friday, so fortunately we headed back to the hotel where there was air-conditioning, and we could get a satisfying meal. The second day was an all-day service which was full of theatrics and ‘miracles'. I was surprised at how short ‘the Man of God,' TB Joshua was. The place was packed with people from all over the world. The line getting in was insane.
Now I am used to a traditional one hour or two-hour church service and I went to Catholic school so I can handle a lot of church, but a full-day event is a lot. It was not even that there was preaching from the Bible, but there was exorcising of demons and all sorts of showmanship. At some point, I got bored, and I managed to get outside the gate to look for a café or something. Unlike Victoria Island, Ikoyi and the parts Ikeja I am familiar with, SCOAN is in the slums of Lagos in such a poor neighborhood that there are no hospitality venues. There was nothing around there, so I bought a ‘Star' beer to console myself and went back in. After another boring service on Sunday, mum and I went to visit my friends in Victoria Island, and we flew back to South Africa the following day. My mother is a determined woman and she wanted to full in-house TB Joshua experience so a few months later she booked another trip and this time, we were supposed to stay at SCOAN. I was skeptical but I figured I had better go along and keep an eye on her. I had enough friends in Lagos who could rescue us if it came to that.
We were met at Murtala Muhammed International Airport by the protocol people from SCOAN and were bussed to the compound. They took away our passports and said we would get them back when we were leaving. I had brought some frozen meat for a girlfriend of mine, so I asked them to put it in the freezer until someone came to collect it. They put us in dormitories with other women, and we had to bath in buckets, which is common in Nigerian where water supply is sketchy. Once again there was no activity the following day, so I asked for the exact address since my girlfriend was going to send her driver to collect the meat. There were minders everywhere and they told me that nobody was allowed to come in or out of SCOAN! Now I know what being in prison feels like. The food was atrocious, and you could not even tell what type of meat you were eating. I just spent the day reading then we went to bed. The next day was another excruciating long service. By afternoon, I think I was texting my friends when a group of heavies surrounded me. TB Joshua stared at me and said, ‘You! You are not praying hard enough!' How he noticed me sitting at the back, I will never know. I did my best to look pious after that but none of his showmanship made any sense to me.
Then we retired to the ladies dorm. At around am we were woken up by loud shouting. They said we should get dressed to go up to the mountain! We sat around waiting until all thought of sleep had gone from our minds and then suddenly, our overseers changed their minds and told us to go back to bed. I could not sleep after that. On the final day, for an additional fee, you could not get a one-on-one with the bishop. My mother did not skimp, and she went in for a private prayer session. I was dealing with a chipped tooth from a lousy turkey stew full of bones that they had served us for lunch. On the last day, I collected the meat from the freezer and all of us visitors were driven back to Lagos airport. Just before check-in, they handed us back our passports. What they did not know was that I had planned to spend an extra night in Lagos to see my friends. I felt like a virtual prisoner as the SCOAN disciples watched all our movements as we went to check in. I asked to go to the bathroom and quickly headed to where the elevator was located then went down to arrivals where there were a bunch of taxis waiting outside. I jumped into a taxi and escaped to my girlfriend's place in Victoria Island. I looked like a traumatized refugee when I arrived. Apparently, I am not the first person who had an unpleasant experience going to SCOAN with a family member who is a believer in TB Joshua. I only went to support my mother, but I got more than I bargained for.
When I got back to Johannesburg, mum told me the SCOAN army had almost shut the airport down, looking for me. They kept interrogating her asking, ‘Where is your daughter?' On the flight, the other visitors from South Africa told her, ‘Good for your daughter. They act like we are prisoners. She warned me not to talk about what happened, especially not to post on social media about my experience because TB Joshua was a powerful man with a wide reach. The truth of the matter is that my mother was still captivated by TB Joshua, and she went back there three times with groups of other followers from Zimbabwe. By 2012 I was working in Lagos and mum called me asking me to go to SCOAN and buy her several bottles of the ‘holy water' that TB Joshua was selling. I had sworn never to set foot there again, so I gave her my driver, Biola's phone number, and told her to ask him to go. SCOAN was selling these small spray bottles of water for $35 and if you sprayed it, the water was supposed to cure any ailment. I gave the driver money to buy 20 bottles, which I figured would last a long time. Apparently, mum was dishing out this holy water to everyone because she kept calling and asking for more. My cousin told me that if you even coughed, she would ask you to open your mouth so she could spray some holy water to cure it. Her cousin was dying of cancer, and she gave him several bottles, but he did not make it. Eventually I spent over $2,000 on this bogus water so the next time she asked, I told her to give me the money to buy it, and that is how I put an end to that racquet.
TB Joshua was a master at marketing himself because everyday plane loads of people would arrive in Lagos full of people hoping he would perform miracles for me. The sad part of is that many of them did not have a booking at SCOAN and they had no idea where they were going so, they would end up stranded in the airport. I was friendly with other Zimbabwean expatriates working in Lagos and we all had stories of rescuing Zimbabweans at the airport coming off a flight in the hopes of getting to SCOAN to see TB Joshua. Some of them did not even have money for a hotel and even if you did not want to intervene, you could not be heartless. This guy reached out to me once, saying that his parents were obsessed with coming to Nigeria to see TB Joshua. He said that they had been brainwashed through the TV and I knew exactly what he meant. When the BBC documentary came out recently, a friend who knew my experience sent me the link and I watched a couple of episodes. It all makes sense now. Everyone in life faces challenges and here was a man who exploited the masses on a massive scale. People in Africa are poor and especially in a country like Nigeria where healthcare is a challenge, people were eager to believe in miracles since there was no alternative.