TB Joshua Abused Me, Sexualized Women, Brainwashed His Disciples – Daughter

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in an investigative documentary has revealed the atrocities and sexual crimes committed by late Pastor Temitope Balogun Joshua, famously known as TB Joshua of The Synagogue Church of All Nations. As part of the investigation, the BBC interviewed at least 30 former members and workers of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) among whom was Ajoke, a lady said to be a love child of the late founder of the SCOAN. The documentary reveals how the late megachurch leader, Joshua, who is accused of committing sexual crimes on a mass scale, locked up his own daughter and tortured her for years before leaving her homeless on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria. 

In the 3-part documentary, Ajoke state that the late prophet sexually abused some women in the church. She narrated how she was pulled out of school and taken to the church in Lagos at age seven and locked up in the disciples’ room where she was forced to be part of the group. She accused the late prophet of brainwashing the disciples to the point that nobody could question his actions and instructions. The disciples were both brainwashed and enablers. Everybody was just acting based on command — like zombies. Nobody was questioning anything. “My dad had fear, constant fear. He was very afraid that someone would speak up.”

Ajoke narrated how she suffered consistent abuse from her father in the church because “my existence as a child from another mother undermined everything he claimed to stand for”. She claimed she was beaten for wetting the bed at age seven and then forced to walk around the compound with a sign around her neck that read: “I am a bedwetter.”

Just a child, Ajoke would not follow the rules like the other disciples: she refused to stand up when the pastor came into the room and rebelled against the severe sleeping orders.

The abuse started soon after.

Not long after arriving, aged seven, she remembers being beaten for wetting the bed and then being forced to walk around the compound with a sign around her neck saying "I am a bedwetter."

"The message about Ajoke was that she had terrible evil spirits that needed to be driven out," says one former female disciple.

From the moment Ajoke moved to the church in the Ikotun neighbourhood of Lagos, she was treated like an outcast.

"She was, like, kind of labelled the black sheep of the family," says Rae, from the UK, who spent 12 years living in the church as a disciple. Like most of the former disciples interviewed by the BBC, she opted to only use her first name.

Rae remembers a time when Ajoke slept for too long, and Joshua shouted at her to get up.

"There was a time in the disciple meetings - he [Joshua] said people could beat her. Anyone in the female dormitory could just hit her and I remember just seeing people slapping her as they walked past," she says.

Another disciple took her to the shower and "whipped her with an electrical cord and then turned the hot water on", she says.

Recalling the incident, Ajoke says: "I was screaming at the top of my voice, and they just let the water run on my head for a very long time."

Such abuse was never-ending, she says.

"We're talking about years and years of abuse. Consistent abuse. My existence as a child from another mother undermined everything he [TB Joshua] claimed to stand for."

The abuse escalated to a different scale when she was aged 17 and confronted her dad about "accounts, first hand, of people who had experienced sexual abuse.”

"I saw female disciples go up to his room. They were going away for hours. I was hearing things: 'Oh this happened to me. He tried sleeping with me.' Too many people were saying the same thing," she says.

“I couldn’t take it any more. I walked directly into his office on that very day. I shouted at the top of my voice: ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting all these women? “I had lost every iota of fear for this man. He tried to stare me down, but I was looking in his eyes,” she added.

Ajoke, according to BBC, was one of the first whistle-blowers to reach out to them about the abuse she witnessed at her father's church, the Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan). Now aged 27, Ajoke lives in hiding and has dropped her surname "Joshua". The BBC didn’t not publish her new name.

Little is known about Ajoke's birth mother, who was believed to be one of TB Joshua's congregants. Ajoke says she was raised by Evelyn, Joshua's widow, from as early as she can remember. Until the age of seven, Ajoke says she had a very happy childhood, going on holiday with the Joshua family to places like Dubai. But one day everything changed. She was suspended from school for a misdemeanour, and a local journalist wrote an article referring to her as the illegitimate child of TB Joshua. She was pulled out of school and taken to the Scoan compound in Lagos.

TB Joshua, who died in 2021 at the age of 57, is accused of widespread abuse and torture spanning almost 20 years.