One of my blog posts that is receiving sustained attention on the internet long after it was posted is the one about the Nigerian megachurch “Synagogue Church Of All Nations”(SCOAN) and their shall we say prolific frontman Temitope Balogun Joshua.
Just the other day it’s reported that TB Joshua claimed he had foreseen the Colorado cinema shooting. He apparently does that a lot, foreseeing stuff. Like, with football results or election outcomes, for example.
It does seem a trifle odd that 2012 years after god allegedly already picked a team and a prophet, from one particular tribe in the Middle East as you may remember, he would have thought it necessary to give the job to someone else 2000 years later, someone who claims he can heal illnesses like HIV, causing in many cases the death of those who believe the nonsense. Why would god, if he actually existed, and if he, as the Bible states, considers the Israelites his all-time favourite tribe and Jebus his son the one true prophet, give out Prophet franchises 2000 years later to clowns like TB Joshua so the guy can foresee soccer scores ?
I note that TB Joshua has been to Australia, and for example in this very funny and rather poorly choreographed video he is said to be exorcising a demon, or maybe Tony Abbott, who knows, from an Australian woman :
Excuse me while I giggle a little over this. I think I prefer the real thing.
There is a serious part to this, however. Frauds like Temitope Balogun take advantage of the poor, the uneducated and the downtrodden, like religion has done for millenia, it is after all what it thrives on and what makes superstition and belief in the supernatural survive to this day. TB Joshua gets rich while the people who believe in his crap stay poor, or lose money or their health.
Cameroon has banned TB Joshua, and issued warnings to its citizens regarding travel to Lagos :
“The Cameroonian Government warns these pilgrims that they will face the consequences alone. This is motivated by the painful and shameful fact that Cameroonian men and women, in search of deliverance and blessings, once in that church, find themselves in bestial and pitiable conditions.
“Women are Molested; pilgrims dispossessed of their belongings by armed robbers and left to sleep on the streets at the mercy of gangs. Many cases of assassinations have even been recorded. And this is without other cases that are not recorded at the Cameroonian Embassy in Lagos with the victims too ashamed to narrate their infernal odysseys once they are out of Hell,” the minister said.
TB Joshua and SCOAN are indeed dangerous frauds.
