TB Joshua incident must bother Uganda

This week, the BBC released a documentary with a number of testimonies pinning the late TB Joshua, a charismatic Nigerian “religious” leader of one of the world’s biggest evangelical churches, the Synagogue Church of All Nations (Scoan).

The documentary revealed that the preacher reportedly secretly committed sexual crimes on a mass scale following testimonies from Dozens of alleged victims  who said that Joshua raped and abused women from around the world several times a week for nearly 20 years.

The saddest bit about the revelations was that many of the alleged victims said the preacher was protected by authorities in Nigeria and beyond.

Although the allegations have yet to be legally verified, they are similar to those made against some preachers in Uganda.

Just like Joshua, most alleged criminal preachers are heavily guarded and in one way or the other, they are highly politically connected which should be a concern for Ugandans.

One of the victims in the documentary accused a powerful Ugandan prophet of also engaging in similar acts.

The idea is not to bar anyone from exercising their right to worship but any form of religious practice which involves crime should be checked in the interest of unsuspecting Ugandans who fall victim to such unscrupulous preachers.

Whereas our Constitution under Article 43 (2)(c) provides that the public interest shall not permit any limitation of the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms, authorities should not provide space for sexual exploitation, extortion and other forms of crimes that are secretly subjected to the people.

Further still, is that some practices must also be put to check since they hinder government efforts such as eradicating some diseases, encouraging people to work, education, among others.

It is unfair to parade people with illness and present them as cancer patients or any other chronical illness. Such practices pause a threat to the public health sector and cause numerous deaths.

It is sad that while enjoying their freedom of worship, believers, who would be productive, are made to stay in churches for a several days as authorities look on.

Moving forward, government should enact a law to guide faith based actions to curtail crime. Freedom of worship should never be used as a tool for extortion, sexual harassment and committing other crimes.

Just like how government enacted the Traditional and Complementary Medicine Act 2019 to regulate herbal medicine, there is need to create a law the will help us draw a line between faith and crime.