NAIJAFEED

Monday, June 7, 2021

Controversial Nigerian pastor TB Joshua dies aged 57

The popular but controversial Nigerian evangelical preacher Temitope Balogun Joshua has died from an undisclosed cause, his church said on Facebook. He was 57.

The preacher, popularly known as TB Joshua, founded The Synagogue Church of All Nations, a Christian megachurch in Lagos.

The father of three was one of Africa’s most influential preachers with millions of television and social media followers. More than 15,000 people from Nigeria and abroad attend his Sunday services.

“God has taken his servant Prophet TB Joshua home … His last moments on earth were spent in the service of God,” the church wrote on its Facebook page on Sunday, without giving further details.

One of the pastor’s lawyers Olalekan Ojo also confirmed his death.

“I confirm that the man of God, pastor TB Joshua passed away on Saturday after his evening programme,” Ojo told AFP news agency.

Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from the Nigerian capital Abuja, said the preacher was one of the most respected pastors in Africa’s most populous country.

“He rose to prominence in the 1990s at a time when there was an explosion of televangelism in Nigeria and many parts of Africa. He was one of the most followed preachers in Nigeria and [across] Africa,” Idris said.

He was also popular in South America where he had held many religious campaigns.

Controversies

TB Joshua was known for making predictions and for his claims to cure various ailments and to make people prosper through miracles.

He was, however, controversial, with critics questioning his claims and saying he profited from people seeking hope.

According to Forbes, he had an estimated fortune of several million dollars.

Many African presidents, senior government officials, international football players, musicians and other high-profile guests have worshipped in his church.

In September 2014, the guest house of the church collapsed, killing more than 100 people, most of them foreigners who were in Nigeria to attend his services.

While authorities say the building collapsed because of structural defects, TB Joshua insisted the building was blown up by a small plane that he claimed flew over it shortly before it came down.

In April, the pastor’s YouTube channel, which has more than 1.8 million subscribers and 600 million views, was shut down over allegations of hate speech against LGBTQ people.

In one of his videos, watched more than 1.5 million times, a woman is seen being hit violently to “cure” her of her sexuality.

Homosexuality is illegal in Africa’s most populous country, and “homosexual acts” can carry a 14-year prison sentence.

Facebook had also removed several videos on Joshua’s page, which has more than 5.7 million followers, for his anti-LGBTQ remarks.

Al Jazeera

Evangelist T.B. Joshua to be sued for building collapse that left 115 dead in Lagos, Nigeria

Nigerian preacher TB Joshua explains wrong U.S. election prophecy

Friday, June 4, 2021

Violence in Nigeria's northwestern Zamfara state spawns humanitarian crisis

Rising insecurity in Nigeria’s northwestern state of Zamfara has spawned a humanitarian crisis, International aid group Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Thursday.

Gunmen, often riding motorcycles, have attacked towns in the northwest in recent years, forcing thousands to flee across the northern border to Niger. Attackers have attained global notoriety through mass kidnappings at schools, abducting more than 800 students since December.

MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said the security situation had worsened in the last few months. It referred to an increase in reports of kidnappings, killings, armed robbery and sexual violence in the region.

The medical group said its teams in Zamfara, one of the states worst hit by the violence, treated 10,300 children in the first four months of 2021 for ailments including severe malnutrition, measles, and respiratory infections. It said the number of children treated was 54% higher than in the same period last year.

“Our teams in Zamfara state have witnessed an alarming rise in preventable illnesses associated with a lack of food, drinking water, shelter and vaccinations,” said MSF doctor Godwin Emudanohwo.

Rising violent crime in the northwest has compounded the challenges faced by Nigeria in northern states which are typically poorer than those in the south of Africa’s most populous country of about 210 million.

A decade-old Islamist insurgency in the northeast has killed more than 30,000 people and forced at least 2 million to flee their homes, creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Video - Nigeria internationals Iheanacho, Ndidi enjoy fruitful season at Leicester

Kelechi Iheanacho and Wilfred Ndidi propelled Leicester City to win their first-ever English FA Cup in the just concluded season. The pair also inspired the Foxes to a fifth finish in the English Premier League. CGTN's Deji Badmus now looks back at a rewarding campaign for the Nigerian internationals.

Nigeria’s president threatens rebels amid rising violence in southeast

People who promote insurrection in Nigeria face a “rude shock”, its president warned on Tuesday, raising the possibility of a fierce crackdown on rising violence in the southeast that has included arson attacks on police station and electoral offices.

Security forces are already grappling with criminal gangs in the northwest who carry out mass kidnappings for ransom, a decade-old Islamist insurgency in the northeast, and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea off Nigeria's southern coast.

Electoral offices and police stations have been burned down in recent months across the southeast, a region where armed gangs have carried out a series of killings of police officers, prompting a police operation in May.

Nigerian authorities have blamed those attacks on a banned separatist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and what police call its armed wing, the Eastern Security Network. But the IPOB has repeatedly denied involvement.

The statement issued by the office of President Muhammadu Buhari, who previously led Nigeria as a military ruler in the early 1980s, said "a rude shock" awaits "those bent on destroying the country through promoting insurrection, and burning down critical national assets".

It referred to the 1967-70 civil war fought over the secession of an area in Nigeria's far southeast called Biafra that killed one million people.

"Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through (that) war, will treat them in the language they understand. We are going to be very hard sooner than later," Buhari, who served in the army against the secessionists, was quoted as saying.

On Monday the streets of towns across the southeast were quiet and businesses were shuttered after the IPOB urged people to stay at home to commemorate those who died in the war.

The presidency statement said there had been 42 attacks on offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission in recent months across 14 states.

Reuters

Monday, May 31, 2021

Dozens kidnapped from Islamic school in northern Nigeria

An armed gang abducted dozens of students from an Islamic school in the northcentral Nigerian state of Niger on Sunday, police and state government officials said.

Some 200 children were at the school at the time of Sunday’s attack, the Niger state government said on Twitter, adding that “an unconfirmed number” had been taken.

The abduction came a day after 14 students from a university in northwestern Nigeria were freed, having spent 40 days in captivity.

A spokesman for Niger state’s police said in a statement that gunmen on motorcycles attacked the town of Tegina, in the Rafi local government area of the state, at approximately 3pm (14:00 GMT) on Sunday.

He said the attackers were “shooting indiscriminately and abducted a yet to be ascertained number of children at Salihu Tanko Islamic school”. One person was shot dead during the attack and a second person was seriously injured, the state governor’s spokeswoman said.

Armed groups carrying out kidnapping for ransom have been blamed for a series of raids on schools and universities in northern Nigeria in recent months, abducting more than 700 students for ransom since December.

The school’s owner, Abubakar Tegina, told the Reuters news agency in a phone interview that he witnessed the attack.

“I personally saw between 20 and 25 motorcycles with heavily armed people. They entered the school and went away with about 150 or more of the students,” said Tegina, who lives approximately 150 metres (about 500 feet) from the school.

“We can’t be exact because most of them have not reported to the school as at that time,” he said, when asked for further details of the number taken.

Tegina said there are approximately 300 pupils aged between seven and 15. He said pupils live at home and only attend classes at the site.

One of the school’s officials, who asked not to be named, told the AFP news agency that the attackers initially took more than 100 children “but later sent back those they considered too small for them, those between four and 12 years old”.

The state government, in a series of tweets, said the attackers had released 11 of the pupils who were “too small and couldn’t walk” very far.

Most students kidnapped in recent months have been taken from boarding schools.

Armed gangs have been terrorising people in northwest and central Nigeria by looting villages, stealing cattle, and kidnapping people for ransom.

On April 20, gunmen known locally as “bandits” stormed Greenfield University in northwestern Nigeria and kidnapped about 20 students, killing a member of staff in the process.

Five students were executed a few days later to force families and the government to pay a ransom, and some 14 students were released on Saturday.

Local press said that the families had paid a ransom totalling 180 million naira ($440,000) for their release.

The criminal gangs maintain camps in the Rugu forest which straddles Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger states.

Al Jazeera