It’s 2 Years Today Since TB Joshua’s Building Collapsed Killing 115 People

Prophet TB Joshua

Today makes it two years since 115 people, including 84 South Africans, a Zimbabwean and 30 other unknown nationalities perished in a building collapse at a mega church in Lagos belonging to controversial Nigerian Pastor, Prophet TB Joshua.

Two years after, the controversial pastor has moved on with his miracles and prophecies around the world. His church has continued to grow and opinions remain divided over what led to the crash. A public relations machine in the church has continued to dish out a positive press for the church.

On 12 September 2014, a guesthouse located within the premises of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, SCOAN, came down in Ikotun-Egbe area of Lagos, falling completely to the ground and prompting controversial TB Joshua to blame a strange small plane that had “hovered” over the building hours before it came down.

In a video recording first shown to the publisher of TheSimonAtebaNews, the Man in the Synagogue as TB Joshua is fondly known by his followers across the world, claimed that a sophisticated weapons used by a small plane that passed over the building about two hours earlier was to blame for the sudden crash. In several other videos, he tried to support his evidence with similar incidents around the world.

Prophet TB Joshua

According to him, when a building comes down due to structural failures, there is always part of the building that remains standing. But in the case of the Synagogue Church, the five-storey building came down completely, a suggestion that something else was to blame.

In court and in video evidence on his Emmanuel Television station watched by millions of people around the world, TB Joshua claimed that the building did not come down because of structural failure or substandard materials used by the church. He argued that the building was bombed by an advanced weapon, too advanced for Nigerians to understand.

TB Joshua and former Lagos Governor Babatunde Fashola at the crash scene in September 2014

However, the Lagos state government took the church to court and the coroner’s report unequivocally found the cause to be due to structural failures.

Three government agencies, the Nigeria Building And Road Research Institute (NBBRI), the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) and the Building Collapse Prevention Guild (BCPG), examined the site and found that TB Joshua’s church used inadequate beams of 750mm by 225mm when it should have been 900mm by 300mm for a building as high as that one.

The church also, the investigators found, used inadequately reinforced columns when it should have been reinforced with 12 x Y25 bars or 20 x Y20mm bars. Instead SCOAN used 10 x Y20 bars.

Investigators also found out that the church used inadequate bearing pressure for the central column due to the 2m x 2m x 0.9m foundations.

There was also the failure to introduce rigid zones for bracing the structure, the investigators said, adding that the church did not design the frames as an unbraced structure.

But that was not all. There was also, investigators said, failure to provide movement joints that could have absorbed any movement due to creep, contraction, expansion and differential settlement etc..

They said 8 out of the 12 main beams of the structure failed because they were undersized, under-reinforced, both in tension and shear, and that the tension bars were poorly anchored to the column supports and 8 x Y20 was used instead of 14 x Y20.

The ground floor columns, they concluded, were slender and readily gave in to buckling, causing everything to come down.

But TB Joshua rejected the claims, insisting that the strange plane brought down the building.

In November 2015, Mr. Joshua failed to appear at a hearing. Over the months, SCOAN’s lawyers filed multiple applications to stay the proceeding while the Lagos state government has repeatedly insisted that this case receive trial.

Local radio host “Daddy Freeze” or “Freeze”, drew unfavorable comparisons to a similar incident in Lekki, in which Lekki Gardens managing director Richard Nyong was jailed for illegally unsealing a building that he was having constructed and that which later collapsed. He was upset because Nyong had been arrested quickly, Joshua had not.

In nine days, it will be exactly two years since the incident happened with many unanswered questions.

Many of TB Joshua’s followers continue to believe the devil or the alleged strange plane crashed the building.

The church has continued to grow and TB Joshua has continued to perform miracles and predicting tragedies across the world.

His prophecies have left many confused, with many wondering why he could not see tragedy in his own church, but sees it in Italy, France and Russia, thousands of kilometres away from Nigerian shores.

The government in Lagos confiscates any building that collapses due to negligence. The matter is in court and if found guilty, the government may take over the property and send many to jail.