I had the privilege of a private viewing session of the BBC Africa Eye latest documentary “DISCIPLES: The Cult of TB Joshua”. You can trust Anas Aremeyaw Anas and his team to dig up the evidence that eludes even state investigators with all the resources.

I lost count of the crimes and egregious human rights abuses T.B. Joshua is said to have perpetrated against the victims and the countless gullible others in Jesus’ name. It is difficult to discount the harrowing stories of the experience of Hell itself told by the former disciples. The plenty evidence of charlatanic advertisements, domestic violence in the nature of economic, verbal, emotional, sexual, physical and psychological abuse; defiling girls and raping those women; the crimes and torts of assault, battery, threats of harm and death; false imprisonment, barefaced fraud, corruption and even murder, mass murder in the illegal structure that collapsed and killed 116.

These go on right here but we will rather tell the few people who will speak up against such to shut up, and not touch the anointed. Yes, and there is absolutely no consequence. That’s the real problem as these corrupt politicians will protect such criminals for fear of losing votes from their members. Votes for power, that’s all that matters.

We see so-called pastors violate the dignity of people by subjecting them to all sorts of treatment and chaining some like animals to trees. Their churches have become mental homes where the vulnerable are flogged, starved, and fed like ‘dogs’ in the name of providing a cure they never get.

The IGP cracks the whip on charlatanic prophets who hear God speak only on 31^st December night and only about doom and we insult him for attacking the church.

Kids have watched unthinkable stuff by ritualists on TV and influenced to kill their friends for money. Corrupt politicians take advantage of you to insist on sinking millions of your money, borrowed money, into destroying expensive edifices and building a cathedral while your economy is plunged into historic crisis because they know you are a bunch of ‘foolish’ Christians. They know that you will fight those demanding openness and accountability.

Churches are supposed to be public trust entities, yet you are happy to belong to a no-structures, unquestionable, untrained one-man or woman in a fraudulent business in the name of God. Even Jesus gathered 12 men and was accountable to them.

Be wise as the serpent and choose men who are diligent, who present themselves approved to God as workers who do not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth, the Apostle Paul instructs. We should, like Kenya, demand minimum professional qualifications for clerics. Like the UK Charity Commission, we should begin the barest regulation for order, structures and financial accountability of pastors and their churches. That is My Take.

Samson Lardy ANYENINI

January 13, 2024