1 of 3 “My father was very afraid of anyone talking” Photo: BBC “My father was very afraid of anyone talking” Photo: BBC
Warning: This report contains details that some readers may find disturbing.
The BBC revealed how Pastor Temitope Balogun Joshua, known as TB Joshua (19632021), who was accused of committing mass sex crimes, locked his own daughter in a room and tortured her for years until he abandoned her on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria .
“My father was afraid, constantly afraid. He was very afraid of anyone talking,” says one of the pastor’s daughters, Ajoke. She was one of the first people to report to the BBC the abuse she witnessed at her father's church.
27yearold Ajoke lives in secret and has given up her last name “Joshua”. The BBC will keep its new name confidential.
Little is known about Ajoke's biological mother. She is believed to belong to TB Joshua's congregation.
Ajoke remembers being raised from a young age by Joshua's widow, Evelyn.
She says she had a very happy childhood until she was seven. She vacationed with the Joshua family in places like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Until one day everything changed.
Ajoke was suspended from school for bad behavior and a local journalist referred to her as the illegitimate daughter of TB Joshua in a news report. She was removed from the school and taken to the Scoan compound in Lagos.
“I had to move into the disciples’ room,” she says. “I didn’t volunteer as a student. I was forced to take part.”
The Disciples were an elite group of dedicated followers who served TB Joshua and lived with him within the labyrinthine church complex. They came from all over the world and many had lived in the complex for decades.
The disciples followed a set of strict rules: They were not allowed to sleep more than a few hours a day, they were not allowed to use their own phones, and they had no access to personal email. They had to continue calling TB Joshua “Papa.”
“The students were brainwashed into being facilitators. Everyone just acted on orders, like zombies. Nobody questioned anything,” recalls Ajoke.
She was a teenager and didn't respect the rules like the other students. Ajoke refused to get up when the priest entered the room, rebelling against the strict sleeping rules.
The abuse began shortly afterwards.
Ajoke remembers being beaten for bedwetting shortly after his arrival at the age of seven. She was forced to walk around the complex with a sign around her neck that read: “I wet the bed.”
A former student says she was told that Ajoke had “evil spirits that needed to be eliminated.”
“Once, at the disciples’ meetings, he [Joshua] She said people could hit her. Anyone in the girls' dormitory could easily beat her, and I remember people slapping her as she walked by,” she says.
When Ajoke moved to the church in Ikotun area of Lagos, she was treated like an outcast.
“She was sort of labeled as the black sheep of the family,” says Rae, from the United Kingdom, who was a disciple of the church for 12 years. Like most former pupils interviewed by the BBC, Rae preferred to use only her first name.
She remembers a time when Ajoke slept too long and Joshua called out to her to get up.
2 of 3 The founder of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, TB Joshua, is accused of committing torture and mass sexual abuse for almost 20 years Photo: AFP The founder of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, TB Joshua, is accused of committing torture and mass sexual abuse for almost 20 years almost 20 years of torture and mass sexual abuse to have committed sex for almost 20 years Photo: AFP
Another student took her to the shower, “hit her with a power cord, and then turned on the hot water,” Rae says.
Recalling the incident, Ajoke said he “screamed as loud as I could and they just kept the water running over my head for a long time.”
She says this abuse never ended.
“We’re talking about years of abuse. Constant abuse. My life as the daughter of another mother undermined everything he had.” [Joshua] claimed to be defending himself,” he reports.
“I don’t know how I survived”
When he was 17, Ajoke confronted his father with “firsthand accounts of people who had been sexually abused.”
“I saw students walking into his room. They stayed there for hours,” she says. “I heard things: 'Oh, this happened to me. He tried to sleep with me.' There were a lot of people saying the same thing.”
The BBC spoke to more than 25 former students from the UK, Nigeria, USA, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia and Germany who gave accounts confirming they had suffered or witnessed sexual abuse.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” says Ajoke. “I went straight to his office that same day. I screamed as loud as I could, 'Why are you doing this? Why are you making all these women suffer?'”
“I had lost all fear of this man. He tried to look at me, but I looked him in the eyes.”
Emmanuel was a member of the church for 21 years and spent more than a decade as a student at the complex. He still remembers that day clearly.
“He [Joshua] “He was the first one to start beating her… Then other people came,” he says.
“He said, 'Can you imagine what she says about me?' And no matter how much he hit and hit her, she always said the same thing.
Ajoke says she was dragged out of the office and placed in a room away from other church members. She lived in prison there for more than a year.
Scoan calls this type of punishment “adaba.” Rae also suffered the same punishment for two years.
Ajoke says that at this time She was beaten repeatedly, often daily, with belts and chains.
“I don’t know how I survived that time,” she remembers. “After the beating, I couldn’t even stand up for days. I couldn't even take a shower. He tried everything to prevent people from hearing me.”
Until one day, at the age of 19, Ajoke was escorted to the church gate and left there. The church's armed security forces were ordered never to let them return.
This happened six years before his father's death.
“I was homeless,” she says. “I had no one I could rely on. Nobody wanted to believe me. Nothing prepared me for this life.”
With no money, Ajoke did what he could to survive and spent many years on the streets.
She first contacted the BBC in 2019 after seeing a BBC Africa Eye report. But the long investigation into Scoan's abuse began only after others confirmed her story.
The BBC contacted the church about the allegations in this investigation. The church did not respond but denied previous allegations against TB Joshua.
“It is nothing new to make unfounded allegations against Prophet TB Joshua… none of the allegations have been proven,” the church said.
3 out of 3 “He kept us in slavery, complete and absolute slavery.” Ajoke was brave enough to confront him. I consider her a hero,” says Emmanuel, a former member of the church Photo: BBC “He kept us in slavery, complete and absolute slavery.” Ajoke was brave enough to confront him. “I think she is a hero,” says Emmanuel, a former member of the church Photo: BBC
With the help of former students and some close friends, Ajoke managed to get off the streets. But the experience caused him psychological problems.
Even after everything she had been through, Ajoke remained determined to tell the truth about her father.
“Whenever I was beaten, whenever I was humiliated, it just occurred to me that there was something wrong with the system,” she says.
Former students told the BBC that seeing Ajoke's face towards the man was one of the main reasons they doubted their devotion to TB Joshua.
“He kept us in slavery, complete and absolute slavery,” Emmanuel explained. “Ajoke was brave enough to confront him. I consider her a hero.”
For Ajoke, the most important thing was to see the truth come out.
“I lost everything, my home, my family, but for me the truth is the most important thing. And as long as there is a breath of life in me, I will defend it to the end.”
Ajoke's dream is to one day go back to school and complete his education, which was interrupted at such a young age.
*Investigative reporting led by Charlie Northcott, Helen Spooner, Maggie Andresen, Yemisi Adegoke and Ines Ward.