Founder and Senior Prophet of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN), Temitope Balogun Joshua, popularly known as T. B Joshua, died on Saturday, June 5, 2021.
He died at the age of 57, a few days to his 58th birthday, after concluding a Church programme.
His passing has stirred reactions among members of his church and Nigerians in general, most of whom were shocked by the news.
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Here is the profile of the popular pastor and some controversies that surrounded his ministry as obtained by DAILY POST:
Prophet T. B. Joshua, Nigerian cleric, televangelist and philanthropist was born on June 12, 1963 in Ondo State, South-West Nigeria.
The SCOAN website said that Joshua stayed in his mother’s womb for 15 months before being born.
From 1971 to 1977, he attended St. Stephen’s Anglican Primary School, Ikare-Akoko, Nigeria.
Joshua did complete one year in secondary school, dropping out and started working at a poultry farm.
While in school, Joshua was known and called ‘small pastor’ due to his love and knowledge of the Bible and also his ability to predict the future, according to SCOAN.
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He led the ‘Scripture Union’ during his time in school and in 1987, Joshua founded Synagogue Church of All Nations.
The church began with few members and later grew into a large crowd and was popular even outside Nigeria.
The cleric was popular across Africa and Latin America.
T.B Joshua, in 2009, kicked off a football academy known as ‘My People FC’ as part of his efforts to help the youth.
Joshua was rated as third-richest pastor in Nigeria with an estimated net worth of $10 million – $15 million in 2011 by Forbes.
However, there are some controversies that went on about T.B Joshua.
The cleric was heavily criticised due to the large number of miracles that happened in his Church during services.
Recall that in 2017, popular televangelist, Chris Okotie, accused Joshua of “shamanist practices,” But he did not, however, provide evidence to back up his claims.
Joshua was always seen by fellow pentecostal pastors and Christians as being unorthodox and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) denied the Synagogue Church membership.
In April 2021, YouTube suspended Emmanuel TV channel from its platform, accusing the cleric of hate speech after the T.B Joshua was seen in a video casting out ‘gay spirit’ from his congregants.
