The BBC reveals how the late megachurch leader TB 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.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I2HmDpZmyg?si=LiGMtSuMdk8HLpdm

"My dad had fear, constant fear. He was very afraid that someone would speak up," says one of the pastor's daughters, Ajoke - one of the first whistle-blowers to reach out to the BBC about the abuse she witnessed at her father's church, the Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan).

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

Now aged 27, Ajoke lives in hiding and has dropped her surname "Joshua" - the BBC is not publishing 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.

"I was made to move to the disciples' room. I didn't volunteer to be a disciple. I was made to join," she says.

The disciples were an elite group of dedicated followers who served TB Joshua and lived with him inside the maze-like structure of the church. They came from all over the world, many staying at the compound for decades.

They lived under a strict set of rules: forbidden to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, prohibited from using their own phones or having access to their personal emails, and forced to call TB Joshua "Daddy".

"The disciples were both brainwashed and enablers. Everybody was just acting based on command - like zombies. Nobody was questioning anything," she says.

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.

"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.

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.

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".

👉Read Her Full Confession on our Real Talk Lounge

Religious men are considered saints and unable to harm people. This is a fantasy. In reality this is not the case.

They know the religion is a fake. They are using it to make money.

Someone will read this and still fall victim. Religion is like cocaine. It will take something stronger for you to leave it.

People say she's lying. But quick to believe Emeka Ike's son

I didn't wear the shoes so I can't say they are lying or saying the truth.

You see this world we live in, it's actually a very dark place.

EreluRoz:
I didn't wear the shoes so I can't say they are lying or saying the truth.

You see this world we live in, it's actually a very dark place.

The truth is their accusations will only be true if they have evidence until then it's just word of mouth