TB Joshua Goes On Trial For The Deaths Of 116 People In Church Building Collapse

A Lagos State High Court presided by Justice Lawal Akapo has adjourned till 11th of December, the trial of senior pastor and prophet of Synagogue Church of All Nations, Temitope Joshua over death of 116 persons, mostly South Africans, in a building within the church premises that collapsed last year.

The trial scheduled to commence today was stalled by absence of four engineers who were to be arraigned alongside the Synagogue church’s board of trustees. Only a person appeared in respect of the Church’s board of trustees.

Oluwaseun Abimbola, counsel to the defendants told the court that the contractors were not served with court papers by the Ministry of Justice, and therefore had no cause to appear before court.

Lagos State’s Attorney General, Adeniji Kazeem said no valid physical addresses were found for the contractors, which he said was reason that the Ministry could not locate or serve the court papers on the engineers.

The judge, while ordering that proper court notices be served on the contractors within 72 hours, the judge advised the Church’s counsel that the trial is of a criminal case and that the defendants should take the trail seriously.

The trial is in respect of the death of 116 persons from the mysterious collapse of a guest house within premises of the Synagogue Church late last year.

A coroner inquest presided by Magistrate Oyetade Komolafe into the deaths has found the Church and its contractors negligent in the collapse. The coroner advised the Lagos State Government to institute legal action against the Lagos based church and its contractors for their negligence, which caused deaths of occupants of the building when it collapsed.

TB JOSHUA CONTROVERSIES

Prior to the building collapse, one of the issues that troubled the minds of people about Joshua was when the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, the umbrella association for Pentecostal churches in the country, waged a war against him. The PFN had publicly declared Joshua as an anti-Christ in a letter it sent to some Christian organisations around the world including in Ghana, signed by Ayo Oritsejafor and Wale Adefarasin, PFN’s former president and secretary-general, respectively, and addressed to Rt. Reverend Frimpong-Manso and Rev Deegbe, chairman and general secretary of the CCG.  “As the custodians of the gospel that was once delivered to the saints, it has taken a divine grace for us to diagnose and expose the new wave of anti-Christ springing from Nigeria with one Fatai Balogun a.k.a Prophet T. B. Joshua of the Synagogue Church of All Nations as the arrowhead.”

According to the letter, “Armed with cosmetic testimonies of pseudo-miracles and an array of superficial charity, this pre-ordained enemy of Christ began his assault on the Church a few decades ago and the warning bell was sounded by the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, but foreign ministers from diverse nations who were captivated by the knitted prophecies swooped into Nigeria. Unknown to these gullible pilgrims, their presence simply validated the operations of the anti-Christ. The rash actions of these mostly white but misguided ministers fuelled a global expansion of the emerging anti-Christ.” We must confess to you that our past experiences in the handling of false prophets, false apostles… proved insufficient in the face of the new threats,” the letter said.

Also, Chris Okotie, pastor of the Household of God took to the airwaves accusing Joshua of having occult powers. Matters were not helped when some key members of his church aired a video denouncing Joshua and made all manner of unsavoury allegations that the man of God was sexually abusing minors who were church members. But all these allegations have always ended up being a nine-day wonder generating a lot of dust but leaving the prophet unscathed and without reducing his influence on his followers.

This is why the world is watching keenly the trial of  the collapse of the six-storey building which is the guest house of the Synagogue Church of All Nations where foreigners who troop to his church stayed. There has been an attempt to cover the facts of what led to the collapse of the building which is under construction if though it was also being used as guest house at the same time. Instead Joshua concentrated effort at proving that he was indeed the victim of the happenstance and not culpable in any way.  The prophet stated categorically that the collapse of the building which left 131 injured as September 18,2014  was a Boko Haram attack.

Joshua justified his claim by showing his congregation on the Emmanuel TV the chronology of events shortly before and after the incident as captured by the church’s close circuit television, CCTV. “I received a phone call immediately I got here, just 10 minutes later when I was in the church, that there was a jet hovering over the mountain where I had just left. They said it was hovering at a close range. Before I knew it, I received another phone call that the same jet was now at the church hovering over the building, passing it four times at a very close range before the building collapsed,” he said.

Joshua equally read to the church a letter which he claimed was addressed to him by a Boko Haram, an Islamic sect, member, confessing how he had attempted to plant a bomb inside the church. He said his church was being attacked to scare away members. “This environment at Ikotun Egbe, we have never witnessed an accident of a building collapse. This is a very stable terrain. I have been here for the past 30 years. I am pregnant with words, but we have left the security agencies to do their job. Let us believe and educate our people and be alive.”

Joshua did not tell his audience whether he reported the letter to the police but he assured them that God would bring the perpetrators of the attack to book. Joshua said that the decision of the insurgents to focus on his church might be the end of the Boko Haram’s activities in the country. “I know you will ask why the church? It is because of the spiritual blessings that God has bestowed upon us. A big head wears a large hat. Don’t forget about the Ebola issue too, it was God that rescued the church. Probably they would have dropped an Ebola patient inside the church, so that they would said there is an Ebola patient in the church, don’t go there. They are trying to scare you from coming to church. Don’t be scared, you are not the target, I’m the target. I know my time has not yet come. I have not yet finished my job. I want to assure you that our God will get back at them and you will know when he gets back to them. May be this would be the end of the whole thing,” Joshua said.

Joshua in the course of his sermon told his congregation that they must be wondering if he had seen a ‘revelation,’ because, he had encouraged his church members not to trust in their possession but the Giver of the possessions. The pastor also said some months ago, he reported that a member of Boko Haram was apprehended in his church, but the Lagos State government did not believe it. He claimed that a few months ago, the church sighted an aerial surveillance camera hovering above the church. He said members of the church knocked it down and brought it to him.

But Joshua’s Sunday sermon contradicted what he told journalists on Saturday, September 13. According to him, he was at the mountain when he received call that an aircraft was hovering around the six-storey building. “I was at the mountain yesterday, where I went to pray. After praying, I slept off there. The place is about five minutes from here. I left around 9 am. They called me that there was a plane trying to land, I told them not to worry; that only a helicopter can land, but they said they were worried that it was coming too close to the building and that maybe it was taking pictures. The same plane went around Ikotun. To our surprise, after moving round Ikotun, it came back on top of this building four times. There is a surveillance camera in here. We have a role to play; we cannot leave everything to God,” he said.

Olu Ojewale./SAHARA REPORTERS