Lagos - South Africans have been flocking to The Synagogue, Church of All Nations, in Lagos, for many years, hoping for miracle cures from its pastor, the self-styled faith healer and prophet TB Joshua, for anything from smoking and drinking to Aids and cancer.
The South African gospel singer Sechaba is one person who swears by Joshua.
Sechaba, previously considered the bad boy of gospel, told Independent Newspapers in 2009 he had been “born again” earlier that year when he visited Joshua at his church in Lagos.
“TB Joshua had heard my music and organised for me to fly up to Lagos.
“I attended one of his services. At that stage of my life I was smoking and drinking.
“He gave me the mic and asked me to sing.
“The song was saying I will never go back any more.
“People were crying. It was nice.”
But not everyone from this country who sought healing from Joshua had such a good experience.
In 2001, former Springbok rugby lock Wium Basson spent almost two weeks at The Synagogue, desperate for Joshua to see him to cure his cancer.
Like other foreign believers, he stayed on the large campus of the church, possibly in the same multistorey building that collapsed on Friday.
When he was finally allowed into Joshua’s presence, the pastor refused to treat him. Joshua said he was merely an agent of Jesus, who had not directed him to Basson.
“I go round, and whoever the spirit directs me to heal, I heal. I am not the healer but Jesus is the healer.
“Whoever He asks me to heal, I heal,” Joshua said.
Basson seemed in a state of near-collapse as he waited in vain for treatment while Joshua walked past him to treat other patients.
Basson returned to South Africa two days later and died within two weeks.
This episode added to the doubts of many about Joshua’s sincerity, suggesting he had avoided Basson because he knew he was incurable and did not want to have such a high-profile failure on his record.
But it did not seem to deter countless more South Africans from making the pilgrimage to Lagos.
Joshua, now in his early 60s, established The Synagogue in 1994 and runs it more like a hospital than a church.
It has different sections, including an emergency unit for the seriously ill and a children’s unit.
Even at the time of Basson’s visit, Joshua’s aides were claiming he had cured more than 10 000 HIV-positive people since the centre was established.
Jimmy Babatunde, who said he had been healed of HIV at the church, showed our correspondent an HIV-positive report from the Lagos University Teaching Hospital for a test done before he visited Joshua and a negative test result from the same hospital after he was “healed”.
But, as Basson’s case illustrated, part of Joshua’s miracle cure method seems to be to ignore failure and calamity as these are inconsistent with his reputation.
And so there was only a small reference to the building collapse on his Facebook site on Tuesday.
Independent Foreign Service