When the deadly Ebola virus appeared in Africa’s most populous country this summer, one of the first people Nigerian health officials turned to was a megachurch pastor.
Temitope Balogun (T. B.) Joshua and his Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN), which boasts 50,000 weekly worshipers, are a continent-wide phenomenon. Zimbabwe’s tourism minister recently cited statistics that 60 percent of Nigeria’s tourists visit SCOAN to explain why the struggling nation was betting big on church tourism. One tragic piece of evidence: When a SCOAN guesthouse collapsed in September and killed 115 people, 84 of the victims were from South Africa.
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