Reportedly, Ajoke was the first whistle-blower to reach out to the BBC about the abuse she witnessed at her father’s church, the Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan).
Even before BBC's documentary, a ex disciple Bisola Johnson had been creating youtube videos and even wrote a detailed book exposing TB Joshua's dirty secrets.
The late megachurch leader TB Joshua's purported behavior has been made public by the BBC. The report says TB Joshua was charged with numerous sexual offenses. According to reports, he imprisoned his own daughter and tortured her for years before abandoning her on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria.
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“My dad had fear, constant fear. He was very afraid that someone would speak up,” says Ajoke, Joshua's daughter.
TB Joshua, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 57, is charged with extensive mistreatment and torture that lasted for nearly two decades.
Living in hiding, 27-year-old Ajoke has chosen not to use her last name, "Joshua."
Details about Ajoke's birth mother are scarce, but it is believed she was one of TB Joshua's congregants. Ajoke asserts that Evelyn, Joshua's widow, raised her from as early as she can recall.
Her childhood was reportedly joyful until the age of seven, during which she enjoyed family holidays to destinations like Dubai with the Joshua family. However, everything took a turn when she was suspended from school for a minor offense, and a local journalist published an article labeling her as TB Joshua's illegitimate child. Following this, she was withdrawn from school and taken to the Scoan compound in Lagos.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 TB Joshua's select group of devoted followers who lived with him inside the church's labyrinthine construction and served him. Many of them stayed in the facility for decades after arriving from all over the world.
They were had to call TB Joshua "Daddy" and were not allowed to use their own phones or access their personal emails. They were also barred from sleeping for longer than a few hours at a period.
“The disciples were both brainwashed and enablers. Everybody was just acting based on command – like zombies. Nobody was questioning anything,” she says.
As a child, Ajoke resisted conforming to the rules observed by other disciples. She would not stand up when the pastor entered the room and rebelled against the strict sleeping directives.
Ajoke's Abuse Journey
She recalls being spanked for wetting the bed shortly after arriving, when she was seven years old, and being made to go about the property while wearing a sign around her neck that read, "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.
Upon relocating to the church in the Ikotun neighborhood of Lagos, Ajoke was consistently treated as an outsider.
According to Rae, a female disciple at SCOAN from UK, she remembers a time when Ajoke slept for too long, and Joshua shouted at her to get up.
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