Nigerian officials were tight-lipped on Tuesday about the scope of a probe into a fatal church building collapse in Lagos that killed 115, as anger mounted against the popular head preacher.
The Lagos state governor’s spokesman Hakeem Bello said the government in Abuja had convened a committee of state and federal agencies to investigate the September 12 collapse.
But worries deepened over whether the federal government’s involvement and Nigeria’s well-documented culture of impunity for the rich and powerful would undermine a thorough investigation.
Joshua, who has thousands of followers in Nigeria and across the world, counts African heads of state among his flock, including Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan.
Bello offered few details about the probe and cancelled a scheduled news conference to provide updates on the incident at TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN).
“The best thing for us is to put things on hold now. Before this out, it would not be right to say this is this, this is that,” added Lagos state information commissioner Lateef Ibirogba.
A total of 84 South Africans were killed when a guesthouse housing foreign followers of the popular preacher and televangelist came down on the SCOAN complex in the Ikotun area of the city.
Rescue workers said the addition of extra floors to the three-storey building without reinforcing its foundations was likely to have caused the collapse.
But Joshua, a charismatic pastor known to his followers as “The Prophet” or “The Man of God” and who claims to work miracles, suggested it was a deliberate sabotage against his ministry.
Building collapses are frequent in Nigeria because of lax regulations and substandard construction materials.
Such collapses are usually investigated by state governments, which Dapo Thomas, a Lagos-based public affairs analyst, said made the federal authorities’ involvement worrying.
“That decision is patronising and this should not be in a true federal system. It is absurdity par excellence,” he told AFP.
Joshua’s following across Nigeria comprises members of the country’s massive poor and working classes as well as the elite such as President Jonathan, whom Joshua has met repeatedly.
Other African leaders past and present are also among the Joshua faithful.
“The probe of the collapse might indict some people,” said Femi Falana, a lawyer and human rights activist based in the city.
“Don’t forget, too, that it is an election year and they don’t want to offend some bigwigs in the church and society through a probe.”
Anger at the response to the disaster has been acute in South Africa, particularly over claims that lives could have been saved if church officials had not blocked access to rescue workers for three days.
Joshua, whose fortune was estimated at between $10 million and $15 million (8-12 million euros) by Forbes magazine in 2011, has announced he would travel to South Africa to meet survivors and their families.
But the youth wing of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party said the evangelical preacher should be barred from travelling until the investigation was complete.
“TB Joshua should not be allowed to come to South Africa until we know what happened to our fellow countrymen at his church,” said a statement signed by Rebone Tau, chairman of the youth league’s international relations committee.
Joshua’s emmanuel.tv network took out a full-page advertisement in the influential Lagos daily ThisDay on Monday, asking for a federal probe into the collapse, which he has linked to a low-flying plane apparently seen circling over the building beforehand.
The probe should “bring to book all those involved in the obvious terror attack of the Church aimed at not only embarrassing and discrediting Prophet T.B. Joshua… but the entire nation of Nigeria,” the advert said.
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