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| JOURNEYMAN PICTURES via BBC News |
An exclusive section of the church, the "emergency department," made the so-called miracles look real. This was where the sick, who came to be healed, would be screened, and the team would decide who should be filmed and prayed for by Joshua. Agomoh Paul, who supervised the department for ten years, told the BBC that the team was "trained by medical doctors."
Every foreign visitor who came to the church to be healed had to complete a medical report detailing their illness and the medication they were currently prescribed. They would be told to stop taking them, but Joshua would order pharmacists to procure the same medicine. Without their knowledge, they would "put those drugs in their fruit drinks," explains Mr. Paul.
Tash Ford, now 49, went to Lagos in 2001 in the hope of having her failing kidney healed but was told to stop taking her drugs. The disciples said to her that she could supernaturally receive a new kidney. Still, when she got home, after four weeks of not taking her medicine, she went into renal failure and was admitted to hospital.
Tash Ford said that when she was at Scoan, she thought we were seeing miracles. She literally couldn't believe what she was seeing. The theatricality seemed to draw everyone in.
The emergency department workers themselves were also being manipulated. They were subjected to horrifying ordeals, including rape, physical violence, and torture, and lived by a strict set of rules - forbidden to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. Now, they struggle to understand how and why they followed the pastor's orders.
TB Joshua told him that he was using this thing to build people's faith in Christ. He didn't have in mind that he was doing something wrong. He thought he was doing something that would help to build people's faith in the church.
For Ms. Ford, it has meant she has lost all faith in organized religion. She wishes she had known that it was all a farce, that it wasn't true. She was manipulated into believing that what the prophet was doing was supernatural: miracles, wonders, and signs.
The BBC has been investigating allegations of bribery and video manipulation against Prophet TB Joshua, who performed healing crusades in countries outside Nigeria. Some disciples allege they were charged with finding people who needed money to pretend to be sick, such as those living in poverty. They would get them into hotels, clean up, and perform miracles. Before the service, they would tell Joshua which rows they had planted and what clothes they wore to know who to perform his supposed miracles on.
The "healing miracles" broadcasted to millions regularly included medical reports stating people had been cured of HIV/AIDS and diseases like cancer. Doctors were interviewed on camera, confirming the cures. In 2000, Nigerian journalist Adejuwon Soyinka reported that these medical certificates were fake, but Joshua quashed his investigation, and it went nowhere. Insiders say it was all a performance on the late preacher's part, with Joshua being described as an "evil genius."
Video manipulation was also used to make the "miracles" appear instantaneous, with before and after footage spliced together to show his purported miraculous powers. Bisola, who was Scoan's chief video editor for five years and worked on Emmanuel TV, claims that what people see is fake and fraud. The BBC denied previous claims against Joshua, stating that making unfounded allegations against Prophet TB Joshua is not a new occurrence, and none of the allegations was ever substantiated.
