TB Joshua, one of Nigeria’s best known preachers, has linked a small plane circling over a church guesthouse in Lagos to its subsequent collapse.<\/p>\n
At least 40 people died when the two-storey guesthouse for members of the Synagogue Church of All Nations collapsed on Friday.<\/p>\n
There is no official comment. Local officials have said additional floors were being added to the structure.<\/p>\n
Mr Joshua – also known as the Prophet – regularly preaches to vast crowds.<\/p>\n
The popular televangelist says\u00a0a small plane had circled over the building\u00a0four times before it collapsed on Friday afternoon and it may have been an attempt to kill him.<\/p>\n
“It was yesterday, Friday, as I was praying; they came to call me that there was an airplane hovering over the church. They said it is like it wanted to land,” his statement said.<\/p>\n
He said about 30 minutes later, it came over the building several times.<\/p>\n
“About five minutes after, the building came down.”<\/p>\n
He gave journalists a CCTV video clip of the alleged plane, urging them “to use their discretion to write on what they saw”.<\/p>\n
Rescue officials say 130 people were pulled out of the rubble – some are being treated in local hospitals. Many foreigners are believed to have been there at the time.<\/p>\n
Mr Joshua’s services, at a mega-church in Lagos’s Ikotun district, are known for attracting thousands of people.<\/p>\n
Followers in Nigeria and abroad believe he has the gifts of healing and prophecy.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TB Joshua, one of Nigeria’s best known preachers, has linked a small plane circling over a church guesthouse in Lagos to its subsequent collapse. At least 40 people died when the two-storey guesthouse for members of the Synagogue Church of All Nations collapsed on Friday. There is no official comment. Local officials have said additional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":47453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14,2139],"class_list":["post-47450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah","tag-slaven-bilic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}