TB Joshua faked his miracles for 30 years. The BBC proved it. His church is still growing.

Review

The BBC’s investigation into TB Joshua, involving more than 25 church insiders from the UK, Nigeria, Ghana, the US, South Africa, and Germany, revealed that the late Nigerian televangelist faked his miracles for over three decades. The healings that drew millions to his Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan) in Lagos — the wheelchair-bound walking, the cancer cured, the dead resurrected — were stage-managed productions.

The emergency department

An exclusive section of the church, the “emergency department,” was responsible for making the miracles look real. Agomoh Paul, who supervised the department for 10 years, told the BBC that the team was “trained by medical doctors.” Their job was to screen the sick and decide who should be filmed.

“Any cancerous situation, they send them away. Then people who had normal open wounds that can heal, they bring them in, to present as cancer,” Paul said. Only trusted disciples worked in the department. They wrote placards for each follower to hold, detailing made-up or exaggerated ailments. When it was time to meet Joshua, they stood in line in front of the cameras and were “healed.”

The drugs in the fruit drinks

Every foreign visitor who came to be healed had to fill out a medical report detailing their illness and medication. They were told to stop taking their medicine. But Joshua ordered pharmacists to procure the same drugs. Without the visitors’ knowledge, they would “put those drugs in their fruit drinks,” Paul explained. Visitors would not become unwell while at Scoan and would believe in the divine healing powers of their pastor.

In the 1990s, when HIV/AIDS reached epidemic levels across sub-Saharan Africa, Joshua told visitors to stop taking their antiretroviral medication when they returned home. “I know people died because they didn’t take their medicine, and it’s difficult to live with that,” a former disciple admitted.

Tash Ford’s story

South African Tash Ford, now 49, went to Lagos in 2001 to have her failing kidney healed. She had already had two kidney transplants. The disciples told her: “Stop taking your medication and just believe.” She did believe she had been healed. When she returned home, after four weeks of not taking her medicine, she went into renal failure and was hospitalized. The medics initially saved her kidney, but it eventually stopped working. She needed kidney dialysis for more than six years before a third transplant in 2011.

“I wish we had known that it was all a farce, that it wasn’t true,” Ford told the BBC. “I was manipulated into believing that what the prophet was doing was supernatural, miracles, wonders, signs.”

The bribes

When Joshua’s team performed healing crusades outside Nigeria, they went to poorer areas of cities to find people who needed money to pretend to be sick. They would offer payment for participation in the staged healings. The “sick” would be coached to exaggerate their problems, sit in wheelchairs, and shout “Man of God, help me, I cannot walk” — because they were warned that Joshua would not pray for anyone who walked in on their own legs.

The propaganda function

TB Joshua’s Emmanuel TV became one of the most successful Christian networks in the world. His YouTube channel had hundreds of millions of views. The miracles were broadcast to millions across Europe, the Americas, South-East Asia, and Africa. The fake medical certificates stating people had been cured of HIV/AIDS and cancer were sent on VHS tapes to churches worldwide.

This is propaganda because it used the visual language of healing — the wheelchair, the prayer, the testimony, the medical certificate — to manufacture belief in supernatural power that did not exist. The belief was monetized. The monetization was global. And the people who believed — who stopped taking their medication, who flew to Lagos, who gave their savings to the church — were the product, not the beneficiaries.

Joshua died in 2021. His church is still operating. The videos are still online. The BBC investigation was published in January 2024. As of 2026, Emmanuel TV’s YouTube channel remains active.

Verdict: False. The miracles were faked. The healings were staged. The medical certificates were forged. The drugs were hidden in fruit drinks. The people who believed were harmed. The church that did it is still growing.