Pastor Temitope Joshua, the leader of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) and widely-known as TB Joshua, has joined Nigeria’s big league of miracle and prosperity priests who have acquired their own private jets.
The church leader took possession
of the nearly brand-new Gulfstream G550 aircraft in April 2015, a few months
after a building collapse at the premises of his megachurch in the Ikotun-Egbe
suburb of Lagos killed 116 people.
Registered as “Synagogue Of Nations,” the jet was purchased using the
Bank Of Utah trustee as the front for purchasing the jet.
Pastor TB Joshua’s jet is the most expensive of the four
owned by Nigerian pastors. Pastor David Oyedepo (Bombardier Challenger 604),
Pastor Enoch Adeboye (Gulfstream GIV),
and Ayo Oritsejafor (Bombardier Challenger 601) are also jet owners. It would be recalled that Pastor Ortsejafor’s
jet was cited in South Africa for money-laundering money last year. The new Nigerian government is said to be
investigating the circumstances of that case, which involved federal funds.
Pastor TB Joshua’s jet has already started making the
rounds. In June, it left the Murtala Muhammad International Airport in Lagos on
a whirlwind of South America, departing north from there to Kentucky in the
United States.
The jet, which has US registration number N131LK, was built
in 2010. It was delivered to its first
user in 2013 before making it to TB Joshua early this year. We learned that the jet made a
voyage to Nigeria in December 2013, as the Bank of Utah was apparently pitching
it to Pastor TB Joshua. The man of God
reportedly asked to see it and bless it before finally taking delivery.
It could cost up to $3 million to maintain the jet annually,
depending on how heavily it is used.
Sources at the church told our correspondents that Pastor
Joshua claims the jet was paid for by at least eight African Heads of State in
2014. It was first kept in Israel before
the tragic church collapse in September in which 116 persons, mostly South
Africans, were killed.
Reports has it that when Pastor Joshua was reached, he denied owning
a private jet. Instead, he said he
frequently charters private jets because he travels extensively, noting, for
instance, that he has an oncoming trip to Argentina.
His claim runs contrary to information from the Nigerian
Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), which claimed that N131LK is on record as
belonging to Pastor TB Joshua through SCOAN.
“What the Bank of Utah does is to help non-US citizens act as agents to purchase aircraft using US financing,” a source at NCAA revealed.
The source recalled that the same bank was also instrumental
to purchasing jets from Bombardier on behalf of the government of Rivers State
under Governor Rotimi Amaechi, and Akwa Ibom under Godswill Akpabio.
Source
SaharaReporters
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