17th February, 2014
Simon Ateba/Lagos
Controversial Nigerian cleric, TB Joshua has described pastors who constantly attack him as discontented people.
The founder of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, SCOAN, a Lagos-based church that attracts followers from all over the world, has been excoriated for many years by several Nigerian pastors who accuse him of using strange powers to heal people of virtually all sicknesses only by laying hands on them.
The 50-year old T.B. Joshua said he is so contented that he does not have time to engage in jealous acts.
“I am contented. It’s all about contentment,” he said.
He said attacks come from those who are not contented, those who are not happy about what they are, what they can achieve and what they can do.
“When you are contented and you’re worth what God says you’re, and you have what God says you have, and you can do what God says you can do, what else again?”, he queried.
“If I see someone somewhere that needs to be corrected, I do it in a gentle manner,” T.B. Joshua said in his Ikotun-based church.
“And when you’re limited in certain areas and you see someone do what you would like to do, definitely envy and jealousy set in,” he added.
“When I see someone do what I would like to do, I see it as grace. But others when they see someone do what they would like to do, they see as power,” he said.
“It is by emulating God that you can do what you see someone doing that you would like to do,” Joshua said.
He said when people attack him, he prays for them because he knows that, “what they attack me for is what they would like to do but they cannot do it.”
Asked about how he heals people by merely touching them and praying for them, he said, “I am not the one that heals. I am not the one doing what I am doing.
Joshua, a primary school graduate, who was born in a poverty stricken family in Arigidi, an impoverished village in Nigeria’s western State of Ondo, has gone from working in a poultry farm in Lagos to being the toast of many world leaders in just about two decades.
Every week, at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, a couple of private jets that bring wealthy and powerful Africans to T.B. Joshua’s church land and many followers arrived on many other airlines, wearing Emmanuel TV T-shirts.