Nigeria’s Academia in the Diaspora have called on security agencies to arrest Prophet TB Joshua, the general overseer of The Synagogue, Church of All Nations (SCOAN) and properly investigate the collapse of the church building.
They are accusing the cleric of suppressing evidence surrounding the collapse of the guest-house in the church.
The petition was contained in a statement jointly signed by Olufemi Taiwo of the Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Ebenezer Obadare of the University of Kansas; Lawrence Akin Adesokan of the Indiana University, Bloomington; Wale Adebanwi of University of California, and Tejumola Olaniyan of University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, all in the United States of America.
The scholars noted that it was important that the police and other investigative agencies be given the necessary backing (both financial and moral) in order to carry out their duties, adding that Joshua was a person of interest, “not for his callousness, but for his cynical and persistent attempts to obliterate the truth and pervert the course of justice.”
They statement reads:
“The police should arrest him. At a minimum, he should be declared a person of interest regarding a crime scene and be invited for a chat.”
“Mr. Joshua has done everything humanly possible to cover up the truth about this tragedy. First, in the first three days after the incident, he illegally barred officials of the National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) from accessing the site and rescuing survivors. Second, while this illegal interdiction was in effect, Mr. Joshua attempted to dictate the narrative and deflect possible culpability by blaming the incident on a mysterious ‘small plane’ which had purportedly hovered above his church complex moments before the collapse.
“Claiming that he and not his church building was the target of the alleged attack, he even released an ‘exclusive’ footage of the ‘strange’ plane. Third, as public anger mounted in South Africa, Mr. Joshua declared the dead ‘martyrs of faith’ and sought to change the subject by promising to ‘take his teachings’ to the country every month for the foreseeable future.
“Fourth, an audio recording has just emerged of Mr. Joshua paying a gathering of journalists N50, 000 each in exchange for suppressing the truth and privileging his version of events. The recording, whose authenticity has not been challenged, was released by Mr. Nicholas Ibekwe, a Premium Times correspondent who was present at the meeting.”
The statement also condemned the visits by President Goodluck Jonathan and governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos state to the scene of collapse saying that the solidarity visits threw police investigation into jeopardy.
