Monday, September 15, 2014
The building believed to be housing hundreds of local and foreign visitors to the church, collapsed on Friday killing over 40 persons with scores injured.
Rescue efforts are still ongoing to save many people believed to be trapped under the rubble of the collapse building.
Reacting to incident, TB Joshua told his congregation on Sunday that the building collapse was a direct attack on him by the Boko Haram terrorist sect.
The prophet told members of his church that the attack at his church was targeted at him and not at them.
He used footages on the Emmanuel TV to explain the events shortly before and after the accident as captured by the church’s CCTV.
“I received a phone call immediately I got here, just 10 minutes later when I was in the church, that there was a jet hovering over the mountain where I had just left. They said it was hovering at a close range. Before I knew it, I received another phone call that the same jet was now at the church hovering over the building, passing it four times at a very close range before the building collapsed,” the famous said.
Joshua read to the church a letter which he said was addressed to him by a Boko Haram member, confessing how he had attempted to plant a bomb inside the church.
Joshua said his church was attacked to scare away members.
“This environment at Ikotun Egbe, we have never witnessed an accident of a building collapse. This is a very stable terrain. I have been here for the past 30 years. I am pregnant with words, but we have left the security agencies to do their job. Let us believe and educate our people and be alive.”
Assuring his congregation that God would bring the perpetrators of the attack to book, Joshua said that the decision of the insurgents to focus on his church might be the end of the Boko Haram’s activities in the country.
TB Joshua claims is coincidental coming with the sudden disappearance of a military fighter jet used to fighting the Boko Haram sect.
Meanwhile, Maj.-Gen. Chris Olukolade, Director of Defence Information, said at the same time the building collapse an Air Force jet, marked NAF 466, disappeared from the radar.
Olukolade explained that the plane with only two crew members on board “left Yola at about 10:45am on September12, 2014 on a routine operational mission and was expected back by 12 noon same day. Since then, all efforts to establish contact with the aircraft have not yielded any positive result.”
Neither the army spokesperson nor the aviation authority has however said anything about citing any strange or unidentified plane within the Lagos airspace.
This has greatly punctured TB Joshua claim, especially since his church is located few kilometres from the airport where radar detecting machine would have picked up a flying object within the area.
Moreover there was no reported explosion prior to the church building collapse.
Many believe that the man of God may be trying to dodge liability for the defective building structure which the state government said it never gave approval for its construction.
The Lagos State Commissioner for Physical Planning, Toyin Ayinde, in an initial report said that the collapsed building had no government approval for its construction.
He observed that the building was initially a two-storey building until the church management decided to mount four more storey to the structure.
Ayinde said that records in his office shows that no permit was handed to the civil engineers for the building to be erected.
He said he was awaiting the church engineers to present the building permit they were given to erect the collapsed building.
