World Of Secrets - The Disciples: 3. The Compound

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

TB Joshua’s new disciples Rae and Anneka leave behind their lives in England to follow the prophet, along with other young people from around the world. Isolated and sleep deprived, life is tough for the disciples but the only thing that matters to them is following Jesus – and TB Joshua is their passage. Outside of the closed compound in Lagos, Nigeria, people are noticing that something is wrong. Hosts Charlie Northcott and Yemisi Adegoke unravel a story of miracles, faith and manipulation, carried out by one of the most powerful religious figures of the century. Please note, some episodes in this season of World of Secrets contain graphic descriptions of sexual and physical violence, including sexual assault, rape and the language associated with it.If you've been affected by any of the issues in this series, please contact support organisations in your own country. For a list of organisations in the UK that can provide support for survivors of sexual abuse, go to bbc.co.uk/actionlineArchive: The Synagogue Church of All Nations, Channel 4#WorldofSecrets

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Before we start, some episodes in this series of World of Secrets contain graphic descriptions of sexual and physical violence, including sexual assault, rape and the language associated with it. It really is enormous. It is such a huge building. It's a huge structure. Remember where we started this series being shot at? Well, this is where it happened. And it just looks almost out of place in this type of area.

Everything around here are like one- or two-storey buildings or small little bustling marketplaces, and then suddenly in the middle you've got this massive structure. It looks like something you'd see at Disneylandneyland or something gothic yeah yeah or like a haunted house yeah yeah yeah like a like a caricature of a haunted house you can't see inside there's a lot of people standing outside the church there's a police checkpoint there police car parked next to it and again every single window is tinted. You can't see inside any of them.

And the wall outside is probably 12 foot high. Yeah. Big metal gates. Annika has vivid memories of the compound. When you live at the compound, you don't leave the compound. You can't just walk out on the street. It's dangerous. I tried a number of times to look at the windows. They are completely locked and blacked out.

It felt like a labyrinth. And it's in this labyrinth, this maze of a building, that Annika and Ray stayed. How many years were you there? Both travelled to the compound in the early 2000s. Just due to have my 22nd birthday and then I left in 2013. So was that 12, 13 years that I was there? Yeah. This is World of Secrets, Season 2, The Disciples. A BBC World Service investigation with me, Yemi Siadeoke, and me, Charlie Northcutt. Episode 3, The Compound.

That voice you can hear is Annika, the former disciple I met in a pub in Oxford with Ray. When I met her, she was calm and thoughtful. The woman in this recording is different. She's bursting with energy, sweat pouring from her brow. She's striding through a crowd of what looks like thousands of people and she's praying, calling out, demanding that the people be healed by God. The film was recorded inside the compound in Lagos, in the huge auditorium beside it.

Those we've spoken to told us it was in this compound they slept, ate and prayed, and hardly ever saw the world beyond those 12-foot high walls. The disciples we spoke to joined young. Many are Nigerian, but they're a truly international group of people. Men and women speaking different languages with different ethnicities, coming from almost every continent. But they have one thing in common. They've given up everything. They've dedicated their lives to following TB Joshua. Just as Jesus had disciples, TB Joshua had them too. I wanted to be like him. I was like, how does this guy have this incredible connection with God?

Here's Ray, who joined in the early 2000s when she was 21. He's helping so many people. He's changing many, many lives. Like, I wish I could have that connection with God. In Bible times, when Jesus used to say to his disciples, leave your father and mother and join me, that's what we had all done. We had left our families. Annika became a disciple two years after Ray.

Like Ray, she left everything behind. Her university placement in the UK, her friends and family. Nothing matters apart from following Jesus. family. Nothing matters apart from following Jesus and TB Joshua was the closest thing we had to that. So being a disciple was a joy to actually finally put into practice that pursuit of what it means to be holy. Ray and Annika were there to learn and to train under TB Joshua to perfect themselves spiritually so that one day, maybe, just maybe, they would be able to perform miracles and heal people like he could. So the idea was that we went there, we trained under him

and when God thought it was time, we'd be sent back to our countries to evangelise our countries, to change our countries. He had a whole doctrine around endurance and perseverance and forbearance and this is what you needed to go through if you were going to receive the gift of God. And so it was like you felt like you had to go through a fire, right? Like a diamond before you could come out the other side, right? Like gold has to pass through this furnace

before it can really be gold. Since starting this investigation two years ago, I've interviewed more than 20 people who lived inside that compound, and they paint a picture of a strange and disorientating place, a world of long corridors and rooms with multiple doorways. Of never-ending staircases and secret prayer rooms. The stairs were concrete, the walls were concrete.

It was like one block. It was like someone had poured a building inside a mould and turned it upside down. I don't think I ever saw a bird. I didn't see a tree. The male and female disciples slept in separate dorms. There was a culture of like nakedness in the room. I was told that it was good to be body positive and not have my clothes on. Just being completely naked, like after you've had a shower or the expectation to be completely comfortable with your own body. And that was difficult for me. Life inside was uncomfortable, but to Anika and Ray, it didn't matter. In

everything around them, even the strange things, they were seeing the Bible. My mind instantly went to Adam and Eve. I saw biblical connections in every instruction. mind instantly went to Adam and Eve. I saw biblical connections in every instruction. And Rae found herself looking up at the night sky again, just like she'd done in desperation back home in the UK. It was like 3am in the morning and, you know, I'd just left uni and I'd been a student. I'd been in a really like conventional normal lifestyle. And I looked up at the Nigerian sky and there were all these stars. I just remember sitting there thinking to myself,

this is incredible. Incredibly amazing, holy place, under the stars at 3am in the morning. I feel like I'm sitting in the garden of Gethsemane or something, under the olive trees with Jesus. like I'm sitting in the garden of Gethsemane or something under the olive trees with Jesus. But it wasn't all stargazing. The disciple life was structured around classes and meetings in which TB Joshua would give them practical instruction. It was very much a training program. You were watching a man who was doing all of this stuff right in front of your eyes.

So we were there to learn how that could be the same for us. It actually used to get referred to as the University of God. You were entering the University of God. The disciples were kept constantly busy, studying T.B. Joshua's sermons in the evening and in the day, preparing for the services. It was like army camp. It was like a boot camp. It was tough on the body, tough on the emotions, tough on the mind,

but also that you could be spiritually strong and receive the mighty power that someone like Tiba Joshua was able to carry. Before a service, there's a lot of prep work. And as a disciple, it is your job to prepare those that are coming for healing or coming for prayer. So it's not uncommon to wake up at four because crowds of people are coming and waiting to enter the church. If they've got HIV, they go there. If they've got cancer, they go there. If they've got a spiritual problem, they go there. When the prayer line is happening on a Sunday service, you stand behind them.

You are there to catch them, hold them. The prophet has decided he's going to do a domino prayer or blow into the microphone and go, you know, you've got to run because the crowd in a line is going. If I ran out of jobs, the default is to go and study. So you will see disciples either running around like mad or curved over a book, over their notes, over their Bible, preparing preaches and reading their Bible. It soon became clear their lives would be governed by many rules.

Like monks in a monastery, the disciples had a strict code of conduct. To be a disciple, there are certain things you must do every day. To hear he was awake, you had to drop everything and go to his office and there would be a queue of people. We had to go by God's time, so I didn't know what day, month, year it was. It takes a lot of dedication to be a queue of people. We had to go by God's time, so I didn't know what day, month, year it was. It takes a lot of dedication to be a disciple. It was done by what the services were. Like, oh, well, it must be a Sunday because it's Sunday service. People are coming.

When you go to the office, you miss kneeling on the floor. You can't just stand there, you know, to show respect. We weren't allowed to read anything. We weren't allowed to watch movies. We weren't allowed to watch films. It is non-stop. It's sacrificial. You put yourself last.

The disciples spent a lot of time together, living, eating, sleeping communally. I care deeply for everybody in a sisterhood, brotherhood sense. I would say the love was really genuine. I took Annika as my sister. When you live as a disciple, it's hard. And when you go through the same thing, you get each other. Even though you don't talk about it, you don't discuss it because you're not allowed. But you know, you know, your sister or your brother is going through the same thing as you are. Our whole friendship was based off of our faith. So we were encouraged to talk about spiritual development or what we'd read in the Bible that day. Inside the compound, not all the disciples were equal.

I was very close to TB Joshua. Bistler has greyish black dreadlocks and wears beautiful silver jewellery around her neck. She looks at you with ferocious confidence. Sometimes, when she's talking, she shouts. Of course! Indeed! T.B. Joshua enjoyed it! When she walks into a room, you know Bisola has arrived. I lived in the synagogue close to 14 years.

As one of the closest disciples, a loyalist to the call. You've already heard Bisola's voice on some of the tapes our disciples watched. Can this be the outcome of sin in this gentleman's life? God set him free through his anointed servant who stretched his right hand towards him. Hallelujah. Many of the earliest miracle videos were edited by her too. HIV, the dreaded disease on the rampage. All of them shall receive their healing.

Bissella recruited me. She was there throughout my journey in the initial years. I would say a pretty scary figure in my life. She had a way of saying things that permeated and really struck you very deep at your heart. And she had a reputation for it. She was like his right hand. She knew everything.

She was this figure that was always with him, you know, like he would listen to her. I mean, he wouldn't listen to anybody else. Bissola was one of the most senior female disciples in the church. She oversaw its finances, the editing of the church's videos and was in charge of foreign visitors when they joined. And she did something else too.

More secret. I was one of the chief spies. That whatever I see other people doing, I should come to his bedroom and tell him. He said I will be doing that as God's work. So that made me to feel important. One of Bisola's roles was to make sure that the disciples always kept to TB Joshua's rules. Whatever I see, I was asked to report.

So I too, I report everybody. And people were so scared of me. One of the most important rules in the compound revolved around sleep. Under no circumstances could you sleep without TB Joshua's permission. When they see anybody sleeping, that person will be in trouble. In everything they were doing, the disciples were learning from TB Joshua. And when it came to sleep, TB Joshua himself seemed to never sleep. Many disciples spoke about how he almost never went to bed. No one ever saw him sleeping.

And so when he said to them, in order to be closer to God, in order to be close to Jesus, you need to battle sleep, to fight sleep, to stop yourself sleeping. They were learning that from T.B. Joshua, and he was demonstrating that to them too. I remember being fascinated by the fact that he didn't appear to sleep because he's working for God and he says he can't take a moment off because Satan never sleeps either and he needs to be God's servant and stay awake as much as body will permit him.

Annika remembers this too. It became apparent quite quickly that sitting around too much, reading too much, sleeping too much, was seen as a no-no. If you were so exhausted and you wanted to have a nap, you'd have to go to the office and say, I'm sorry, I really need to have a quick sleep. And he'd sign a pass for you, because if you didn't have a pass you'd get reported for sleeping. I can't describe how tired you were constantly because you've had two hours sleep

and you never have more than four hours sleep ever. Every disciple we've spoken to remembers this constant sleep deprivation. And when you don't get enough sleep, you become vulnerable. My mind was like it had been shaken. It was like a ball of wool. There was no cognitive clarity at all. It was like all churned up. Nothing made sense. Reality was just skewed completely.

You know, there's a Bible reference that says you are in the world, but you're not of the world. And to be a disciple of T.B. Joshua is to live not a human life, but to pursue a spiritual life. You are constantly thinking about scripture. You are constantly thinking of the quotable quotes of T.B. Joshua. To know Jesus Christ is to know him. We're encouraged to memorise them, to chant them. In his name, he will speak to it that it is done. Nothing else mattered. The grinding days on TB Joshua time soon became weeks, which became months, which became years.

You are no longer yourself. I was no longer Annika. I was a disciple of Prophet T.B. Joshua. It's 2003, Birmingham. Doors are being slammed in your face, you're not welcome here. They were capable of murder. Drive-by killings, gang wars, a vigilante group that fought against Jamaica's notorious Yardies. The homeboys thought, we're not going to take this anymore,

we're going to be even more violent than you. Before turning on each other. I'm Livvy Haydock and this is Gangster, the story of the Burger Bar Boys. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. of some of the world's wealthiest individuals. I'm Zing Zing, and each week, my co-presenter Simon Jack and I take a closer look at the world's mega rich, and we try to decide whether they're good, bad, or just another billionaire.

From celebs and CEOs to spot stars and tech titans, find out how billionaires made their money and how they use it. Good, Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. All episodes of season one and two are available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. And click follow or subscribe so you never miss a new episode. All these rules might sound crazy to us,

but to the disciples inside the compound, they felt like this was their training. They felt that they were trying to become like this incredible man, TB Joshua. And in order to do that, they had to do things that were difficult. So in a weird way, the challenge of it, the strangeness of it was part of the appeal of it. I mean, you can see it, like, in the sense that if you're trying to refine yourself spiritually, that you'd have to do some sort of physical purging. Like, you'd have to push yourself to, like, the end of your tether, in a way.

Totally, and they genuinely feel, having been in that place, that this man can heal people from chronic diseases. And if there's any chance that you can get that power yourself, wouldn't you just want to try it? Listening to them, it's like that's how they feel. For Ray and Annika, life inside the compound became their entire world. Something they gradually accepted. This is a country I know nothing about.

I don't know the language, I don't know the etiquette, I don't have any money, and plus I'm scared. We're kind of told that if you walk out the compound, you'll get attacked. So the outside of the compound is terrifying. Inside the compound felt like safety. Inside was like a holy place. I remember my sister calling me while I was there, worried sick, because she'd seen something on the news about Lagos.

And I said, you don't need to worry. I'm in the safest place on earth. Nothing can harm us here. We are physically protected. There are guards. There's a wall. There's barbed fencing. We are safe.

So when we were there, I never felt like I was being imprisoned. I felt I was being protected. The disciples felt they were safe inside the compound and that the outside world was dangerous. To perfect themselves spiritually, TB Joshua taught them that their past lives were now over and new lives had begun. They needed to cut off from the corrupting influence of their families and friends. We have very limited access to the internet. The majority didn't have access at all.

And it wasn't because it wasn't there. It's because he didn't want us to have access to it. We had no access to email. If someone wanted to try and contact me, they had to send it through a central email box. All those emails of significance got screened and then taken to TB Joshua. He decided whether you saw that email or not. So there was this huge severance from day-to-day life, day-to-day relationships and any other influence

other than the influence of TB Joshua and his teachings. The friends and families of the disciples found themselves abruptly cut off from their loved ones, including Ray's best friend from the time, Carla, who left her behind in Lagos. I never heard from her again. abruptly cut off from their loved ones, including Ray's best friend from the time, Carla, who left her behind in Lagos. I never heard from her again. I never had a phone call, I never had a letter.

I had no way of contacting her. There was no number for me to call. I think for the first few years, I tried to get her attention. So I think, OK, well, if I get engaged, then she's's bound to come home she's not going to want my miss my wedding we've been talking about my wedding since we were you know since we met she's definitely going to come home if she hears that she'll come so I remember I actually got engaged to somebody and she didn't come home and I was like oh what what what's going on You know, this is a huge event that she would never miss. She's my bridesmaid.

She's the one. She's my maid of honour. You know, I would do things like that to try and kind of get attention and try and get her back. And all the time pretending that I'm fine because I don't want anyone to think that I'm not. And then over time, I maybe had anger towards it. And then as time went on, I honestly just felt like she had died.

In this isolated, sleep-deprived state, the disciples were encouraged to do something else while living in the compound. Something that wasn't just Bistler's responsibility. Spying for TB Joshua. Disciples were encouraged to monitor each other constantly, policing everyone for potential sins. And anything they saw had to be reported directly to TB Joshua. It was like a pyramid.

He was at the top and then the more you came down, you had a few people that were entrusted with his most deepest secrets. It's very segregated. So he set you against everybody else. Rivalry, jealousy. Someone was always watching you. You were never free. 3am in the morning, I was lying in my bunk bed.

I'd only been asleep about an hour. Suddenly there was all this kind of shouting. Everybody was running and rushing. TB Joshua called a meeting. He came out in this, like, white cassock and he had a blackboard. And then it would start, the reporting. You would be kind of, like, told to stand up. Someone would give a report about you.

So they'd say that you'd done something wrong, wrong essentially or they'd noticed something bad about your character and you'd be asked to stand up in front of all these people about 3am in the morning you know there'd be some kind of accusation that would just come flying left field. Annika remembers the meetings too they happened almost every night. He'd start the meeting and say, OK, who has a report? And then someone would stand up and say, I'd like to report this person. And then everyone would kind of shuffle around and that person would stand up. And so I saw this person sleeping. Something really trivial. His feet smell or they always look a mess.

The reporting system generated deep mistrust among the disciples. They found themselves locked in a constant cycle of reward and punishment desperate to expose each other in the hope of gaining the approval of TB Joshua. These were difficult meetings. They were stressful and highly pressured. We considered these meetings part of our training. Every report is basically akin to a sin. And to be reported is the most ultimate, like, shame.

Such shame. But on the other extreme, to be a reporter filled you with so much pride. I didn't like pointing out someone else's flaws, but at the same time was extremely worried that that would then... I once got... Actually, I did get reported once for not reporting. And like with everything else TB Joshua did, these bizarre disciple meetings were filmed. A record of people confessing to things they may have actually never

done. We've seen a lot of these confessions snuck out to us by some of the disciples, and they're really weird, often unpleasant and humiliating. Many of the disciples told us that these confessions were completely made up, encouraged by TB Joshua so that people can rid themselves of sinful thoughts and desires. I mean, you see in the archives that we've got, I asked Ray. We see people confessing to really weird, strange and just outlandish things. Do you feel like it's likely that many of those things are just simply not true? I do remember people like confessing to things that just weren't just embarrassing, but were just damn not true.

And then you've got people who've been encouraged to escalate. He took video of us throughout our years there. You know, for me, I spent years of my life there. I made false confessions, I made false statements. He's got me up at 3am in the morning in my pyjamas. You know, he's got all kinds of stuff. We've heard about Ray's confession, about being gay, how she said she undressed people with her eyes.

But this made us wonder if there wasn't something more. When you were deep into it, and he started getting disciples to confess to things, sleep deprived after fasting and so on, do you know what he might have on you? What's, like, frightening about it. Do you know what he might have on you? What's like frightening about it is you often didn't know what you were saying in those times because you're in such a heightened state.

There's loads of stuff, Charlie. I would have no idea. This guy kept 13 years of my life on record when I'm sleep deprived, when I'm under duress, when I'm being falsely accused. So, yeah, I couldn't give you specifics because I don't remember half of what I did during the time I spent there

because our memories were completely shot. Does that worry you, that stuff could come out from the church? I think it could be embarrassing, but I think that's all it could be. You know, Ray and all these people are speaking with the knowledge that there's collateral out there on them. And we don't know what that collateral is and neither do they. Ray had confessed. She'd opened up about her sexuality. And then came the part she'd come for, to be rid of it.

Deliverance. Or as she now calls it, conversion therapy. They put me through conversion therapy, what we would have called deliverance. Very traumatic experience, all filmed on camera, where you're screaming and wailing and behaving like somebody that is utterly possessed. You know, and quite frankly, believe that I was. Homosexuality is incredibly taboo in Nigeria and it's illegal. Yeah.

So for people like Ray, who are looking for a way to rid themselves of their sexual orientation, it is a destination that some people turn to for things like conversion therapy. Because conversion therapy isn't illegal in Nigeria, and actually it's something which in some circles and churches is encouraged. Yeah, I definitely, I mean, it probably wouldn't be described as conversion therapy, but that's what it is in terms of people would be laying hands, praying, saying that it's a spirit that they want to cast out of you, etc. So yeah, I would say that that is probably quite common in these types of churches.

And yeah, it's not regulated, it's not illegal, given that homosexuality itself is criminalised in Nigeria. And when you watch videos of TB Joshua's services online, there's quite a lot of videos of people going through what he would call deliverance from the spirit of homosexuality. And yeah, lots of people come and say they have a spirit. There's a man who says they have the spirit of a woman and a woman who says they have the spirit of a man. And he will deliver that person in front of his congregation and or shame the

spirit for what it's doing to that person and and that person will then claim afterwards that they're free once the disciples had passed the first phase of their training tb josh Joshua started to put them to work. He wanted the disciples, but particularly the white disciples, to begin marketing the church for him to people on the outside. He wanted to put them on his videos. So he liked to use Westerners to put on the camera to endorse him and to get the endorsement of the Western world, where there was money. Emmanuel, thank you for joining us here

in the Synagogue Church of All Nations. And Annika and Ray, then known as Rachel, were both pulled in to be presenters on these tapes. My name's Annika and I'm from England. My name is Rachel and I'm from the UK. They found themselves in the very same type of videos that had encouraged them to travel to the synagogue. Image was so important to him.

He pretended it wasn't, but it was like his be-all and end-all. We'd be sent to pick out the white people and make sure that they were put at the front so that they were on the cameras. But TB Joshua had a problem. The regimented daily routine of the compound had begun to take its toll on the cameras. But TB Joshua had a problem. The regimented daily routine of the compound had begun to take its toll on the disciples. We could all look really bad and it was posing questions about our care and what was really going on. So then it was like well you

guys have to wear makeup, you have to look good. You can tell when you watch these videos of the disciples that something isn't quite right. They look almost deathly pale and many of them look quite thin. And back then, people from the outside also started noticing that something strange was happening. The disciples were changing. Watching on, journalist Adijuan noticed too. Watching on, journalist Adijuan noticed too. You could look into their eyeballs and tell that something was not right about what they were saying and something was not even right about them. Watching this footage back today, Ray and Anika say they barely recognised themselves.

The isolation, the lack of sleep, the strange rules. It was like going down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. There's some footage of me talking and I don't recognise myself at all. You need to keep yourself safe from sin. You need to divorce from unrighteousness and you need to embrace righteousness. It's like I'm watching someone else. To know Jesus Christ is to know his power. Your brain has been completely rewired. Therefore, whatever you speak to in his name, he will see to it that it is done. I became almost a robot.

And behind all the miracles and the makeup and the television production, something very, very dark was happening behind the scenes. When you trust someone that much to the point where if he'd have said to do anything, I would have done it. And what the disciples didn't know was that TB Joshua's plans for them were in motion. Plans he'd shared with someone close to him.

Bisola. It was a game and a trap. I didn't know I was joining a cult. I thought I was joining a church. And church was familiar to me and church was a good thing. Next time on The Disciples. This is what is called kubuku. This is horse whip who actually lied down on the floor.

He would explode. They were screaming and screaming and I just kept hearing this like, quack, pow, quack, pow. You lose it, pow, pow. TB Joshua jumped up, flew over the desk. He hit me. He slapped me. He punched me. He kicked me in the stomach. No, Daddy! No, Daddy! No, Daddy! We approached the Synagogue Church of All Nations with the allegations made in this series.

They did not offer a response or address any of the claims directly, but in an earlier email told us that, making unfounded allegations against Prophet TB Joshua is not a new occurrence. None of the allegations was ever substantiated. Thanks for listening to World of Secrets, Season 2, The Disciples, from the BBC World Service. This is Episode three of nine. Thank you to everyone around the world who spoke to us and shared their stories for this investigation.

We want as many people as possible to hear their stories. So please do tell others about World of Secrets. And where you can do, rate and leave a review. We'd be really grateful and it really does help. This season of World of Secrets is produced by BBC Audio Documentaries and is presented by me, Yemi Siadigoke, and Charlie Northcott. It's been made in collaboration with BBC Africa Eye, with original investigation by Charlie Northcott and Helen Spooner.

The producer is Rob Byrne. Additional production from Tom Sarté. The executive producer is Georgia Katt. The series editor is Philip Sellers. At the BBC World Service, the senior podcast producer is Lee Trung. And the podcast commissioning editor is John Manel. Thank you again for listening.

Missioning Editor is John Manel. Thank you again for listening. For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown, there have been suspicions about what lurks behind the glitz and glamour. Concerns about radical propaganda in the motion pictures. And for a while, those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker. Are you a member of the Communist Party? Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

I'm Una Chaplin, and this is Hollywood Exiles. It's about a battle for the political soul of America, and the battlefield was Hollywood. All episodes of Hollywood Exiles from the BBC World Service and CBC are available now. Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts.