HOST
Quick heads up before we dive in. This episode contains descriptions of physical abuse, sexual violence, fire-related injuries, and death. So if you need to step away at any point, that’s completely okay.

Everything you’re about to hear comes from actual court records. The reenactments are verbatim, word-for-word from witness testimony given under oath.

Saturday night, July 22nd, 2006. Ajao Estate, Lagos.

Six people are kneeling outside a duplex. Heads bowed. Some of them bleeding. All of them soaked in petrol.

Standing over them is a man they call “Daddy.” A man they call “G.O.” A man who, according to his own court testimony, prefers to be addressed as …

REVEREND KING
His Holiness the Most Honourable Doctor Reverend King.

HOST
That’s a lot of titles for a man holding a matchbox.

Now, the accused has just ordered his assistant, Kelechi, to fetch fuel. She brings a basin. He looks at it and says it’s not enough. Go and add more. And if there isn’t any fuel in the house? Don’t worry — he has plenty in his car.

More fuel. For the six people he’s about to set on fire.

But here’s the thing — and this is the part that lives rent-free in my head — he doesn’t burn them inside. He was going to. They were in the sitting room. But he looked around at his furniture and changed his mind. Not just because he had a crisis of conscience. Because he didn’t want to damage his property
Not “I’ve changed my mind.” Not “God has spoken to me.” Just — I can’t ruin my rug.

One of those six people was a 25-year-old woman named Ann Uzoh. She was wearing a white satin nightgown. She had been asleep when she was dragged out.

Eleven days later, she would die from her injuries.

And Nigeria would ask the question we’re still asking: Why does a pastor burn his own church members alive?

This is It’s Not Me, It’s The Devil.

[THEME MUSIC]

HOST
Welcome to It’s Not Me, It’s The Devil, a true crime podcast about notorious Nigerian criminal cases, built from court records, newspaper archives, and sworn testimony. Now, does everyone tell the truth under oath? I can’t say. But I can say that if they didn’t, perjury is their problem, not mine. I just read the transcripts.

I’m Chioma Onyenwe, and this podcast is powered by The Archivi.ng Fellowship program.

And if you don’t know Archivi.ng, you should. They’re on a mission to recapture Nigeria’s lost history by digitising old newspapers and magazines and preserving the stories that shape this country before they crumble into dust. So check them out on  ARCHIVI.NG and support their work, you should.

Now, if you’re a Nigerian over 30, you probably remember when this case happened. It was everywhere. The headlines. The outrage. The photos.

But here’s what I’ve learned from digging through hundreds of pages of court testimony: The headlines didn’t even capture half of it.

This is a story about power. About belief. About a man who convinced hundreds of people — educated people, professionals, university students that he was literally God. Not a prophet. Not a messenger. God Himself.

And when you believe someone is God, you’ll do anything they say, including kneeling in petrol while they strike a match.

So let’s talk about how we got here. 

Before Ann Uzoh became a court case, she was Raphael Uzoh’s only daughter. 

Her father, Raphael Uzoh, testified at trial. And I need you to understand — this man joined the church. The same church that would eventually kill his daughter. He joined it just to be close to her. That’s how far gone she was.

And here’s what happened. Ann gained admission to the University of Lagos. Unilag. And if you know anything about Nigerian universities, you know that that’s not easy. Her family was proud of her. They paid her fees, sorted her accommodation, and thought everything was set.

Then she stopped calling home. At first, it seemed normal. University students get busy. But then one morning, Ann came home to collect her allowance. Her father walked her to the bus stop. And as she was leaving, she said something that would haunt him for the rest of his life

RAPHAEL UZOH
So as she was entering into the bus, she said, “Daddy bye-bye” and told me if I wanted to see her, I should go to Christian Praying Assembly. I started crying at the bus stop. This is a child I so much love.

HOST
If you want to see me, come to the Christian Praying Assembly.  Not “I joined a new church.” Not “Come visit me on Sunday.” As if she were already gone.

Her father tracked her down. And when he found her, she had a new name.

RAPHAEL UZOH
They told me there was no Ann Uzoh. Only Ann King. At first, I thought maybe it was another Ann. But when they pointed her out, it was my daughter. She had abandoned my name. She had abandoned us.

HOST
And when Raphael — broken, desperate, asked what was happening, she told him she was doing her G.O.’s work. That she was no longer his. That he should look for his own way to the kingdom of heaven.

Your own daughter telling you she’s not yours anymore.

Raphael did something remarkable. He joined the church. Not because he believed. But because it was the only way to see his child. And even then, she would barely talk to him.

RAPHAEL UZOH
Sometimes I look at her — a beautiful girl looking like an old woman. I saw marks all over her. Bandages. I asked her,  what happened? and she said it was an accident. I asked how she had two accidents that year, only her. She said I should not ask such questions.

My daughter is a queen. Since she entered the hands of the accused person, she became ugly and old.

HOST
Her brother Ifeanyi had the same experience. Ann would come to him for money — school fees, handouts and each time she’d have new bruises. He threatened to stop giving her money unless she told him the truth. She said she couldn’t. It would be too risky for him to know. She told him nobody should come to where she was staying, and if he tried to find her, she was afraid of what would happen to him.

He went looking for her anyways. Found her at the church compound. Called her name. She came out, asked what he was doing there, but before they could talk, two hefty men grabbed him and threw him out.

Ann told her brother she would leave one day. That day never came.

So who is Reverend King? And what was life like inside his world?

His real name is Emeka Ezeuko. Born in Anambra State. Studied psychology in university — which, looking back, explains a lot. His father exposed him to martial arts from an early age. He was physically imposing, intellectually manipulative, and utterly convinced of his own divinity.

The compound was a duplex in Ajao Estate, Lagos. Picture it: a gated property in a busy residential area. From the outside, it looked like any other church leader’s residence. Inside, it was a closed system. King lived upstairs. His most devoted followers — the ones he called his “children” — lived downstairs or in the boys’ quarters at the back. There was a main gate with a lock. It was fenced and with his cars parked in the compound. The sitting room where King held court had expensive furniture, rugs that he was particular about, and a kitchen to the side.

It sounds ordinary. But that’s the point. The horror isn’t in the architecture. It was in the rules.

From the outside, it looked like any church leader’s house. From the inside, it was a compound you could not leave. The gate locked. The Lord’s Army watched. And the man upstairs controlled everything — what you ate, who you spoke to, and whether or not you were allowed to use the bathroom.

When King was asked his name in court, he refused to say it.

REVEREND KING
My name is His Holiness the Most Honourable Doctor Reverend King.

HOST
The prosecutor pushed. Surely you had a name when you were born?

REVEREND KING
I have been ordered by the Almighty not to remember the former things. He gave me this word clearly in Isaiah 43:19. So anything that has to do with the name I was given when I was born, even my degrees, even my studies — those are things of the past since 2003.

HOST
This man is on trial for murder. The prosecutor is asking basic identification questions. And his answer is: God told me to forget my own name.

It gets better. The prosecutor asks where he’s from.

REVEREND KING
I am from Heaven.

HOST
The clerk eventually had to write down that he’s from Anambra because you can’t put “Heaven” on official court documents. They also asked if he was married. His response?

REVEREND KING
In pursuant to the command of my God, I may not remember.

HOST
The secondary school he attended?

REVEREND KING/ HOST
It is against my faith to mention them.

HOST
Now, I know what you’re thinking. How? How do educated people — university students, business owners, professionals — fall for this?

And the answer is: slowly. Deliberately. Through a system of control that King perfected over years.

Now let me tell you how the compound actually functioned. King had an enforcement squad called the Lord’s Army. According to testimony, it had departments — civil, legal, militant, and intelligence. The militant wing’s job was to bully people, put fear in them, and make sure nobody left. If former members tried to leave, the Lord’s Army was sent after them to threaten and beat them.

HOST
During church services — which could go seven hours — you could not leave. Not to use the bathroom. Not to buy water. Not if you were pregnant and pressed. If you tried, the Lord’s Army beat you and threw you out.

And the fines? King testified about these proudly in a murder trial.

REVEREND KING
The person begins to cough and cough. If someone knows that he has a problem with coughing, we used to say it on Thursday before Sunday service: Please don’t come and cough here. Any cough? Fifty naira.

This man had a pricing structure for involuntary bodily functions. And he’s explaining it during his murder trial.

But the fines were the lightest part of it.

King called his instruments of discipline “Cain” and “Abel.” Cain was a cane. Abel was a thick, heavy stick. He also kept iron rods and would graduate to kitchen knives when the mood struck. He told new members upfront: if you can’t take our flogging, don’t join this church. And he wasn’t joking. He flogged adults. Publicly. Routinely. He admitted all of this under oath.

Members were made to change their surnames to King. 

They abandoned their families. Some were instructed to take their own parents to court to legally disown them. 

One witness, Kelechi, actually did it. Took her parents to the Human Rights Commission first — they said they don’t handle disownments.

So King told her to go straight to court. And she did. Because what choice did she have?

Another member, Chiejina — a man with a degree in Industrial Mathematics was told he couldn’t distract himself with worldly things. So he quit his business. Moved into the compound. Became a houseboy. He said in court:

CHIEJINA
My life became nothing. I started owing debts because he wasn’t even paying me. To be honest, I don’t even know how I got to that church.

HOST
A university graduate who can’t explain how he ended up washing his pastor’s cars for free.

And the women had it worse. Far worse. Kelechi testified that she was King’s housekeeper, his cook, his cleaner and his “sex machine.” Her exact words. He put her through multiple abortions. When doctors told her the repeated procedures had caused an infection — they called it “slow poison” — that could destroy her womb and eventually kill her, she told King.

KELECHI
He said so long as I am not pregnant and people won’t know that I am pregnant or that he is having sex with me, that it doesn’t matter. It’s even good if I have infection. That even if I lose my womb, it’s better, so that I won’t be disturbing him with pregnancy or abortion or no abortion.

HOST
A pastor telling a woman it’s better if she becomes infertile so she won’t “disturb him” with the consequences of his own abuse.

And when the prosecutor asked why she didn’t refuse, Kelechi said

KELECHI
I cannot. Because nobody refuses his orders. Anything he says is final. Because he told us he is God. That he is Jesus Christ. That he has right to everybody in the church. And he has right to do whatever he wants to do. So we never argue.

HOST
But wait — it gets somehow worse. King made Kelechi sue her own parents. In court. To disown them.

KELECHI
He ordered me to take them to Human Rights, and that once I get to the Human Rights Commission, they would help me disown my parents. When the Human Rights said they don’t do such things, he said they don’t know their work. That I should take the case straight to court. I did. I had no option.

HOST
Jessica, another member, described how King initiated sexual abuse by framing it as spiritual duty. He told her that by having sex with her, he was sacrificing himself to save her from going to hell. When she didn’t comply fast enough, he picked up a metal rod, then he raped her. Afterward, he told her to look at his body and bragged. He called himself righteous. That whatever he does is righteousness.

And Hope — also known as Chizoba — was accused by King of being a witch. Of shapeshifting into a snake, a python, a mosquito, flies, every other being.  She’s been in the church seven years. She asked a very reasonable question, “If you’re really God and I’m really a witch, couldn’t you have delivered me by now?” His response? He gave her what she called “the beating of my life.” Logic gets you beaten.

He promised to marry her. Made her buy her own engagement ring. And told her that as his future wife, she would serve him completely naked. Stark nude. After every service. “Not once and not twice,” she said in court.

One witness, Jessica, described a ritual early in her time at the church. King had nineteen members fast for seven days — no food, no water. On the seventh day, he made them kneel in a circle, close their eyes, and open their mouths. He poured an unknown liquid into each of their mouths. Something with alcohol in it. Then he threw papers into the centre of the circle three times. She said after that ritual, she could never think clearly again. She would want to leave, want to scream — like being in a dream where your body won’t obey your mind. She just did as she was told.

Vivian, another member, put it more simply. She said that maybe it was in the food they were given — a particular digestive biscuit and a particular brand of pure water, always from King’s sister, always the only thing allowed in the church.

VIVIAN
Maybe that was where we ate all these things, to the extent that we lost our senses. We didn’t know what we were doing. To the extent that fuel was poured on us, we were still there. Hm, I can now think very well.

HOST
She said, “I can now think very well” She said that like a person finally waking up.

So why did King set six people on fire? The answer is absolutely absurd if it weren’t so horrific: fornication. Or rather, the accusation of fornication. Based on confessions that were beaten out of people. 

According to testimony, it started with Vivian. King accused her of sleeping around. She denied it. He told her he’d seen it — that his divine powers showed him what she’d been doing. She kept denying it. So he picked up an iron rod.

Vivian figured out mid-beating that King wasn’t psychic. He wasn’t seeing anything. When she told the truth, he beat her harder. When she lied, he believed her. So she realised it was just a game. So she started making up names. Confessing to things that never happened. Implicating people just to make the beating stop.

VIVIAN
I knew he doesn’t see anything. Because when I say the truth, he would beat me. But when I lie, he would believe what I say. That was when I knew he doesn’t see anything and he doesn’t know anything that had been going on. The thing now became a game. We had to start calling names so that he would let us go.

HOST
And the members had a whole system for this — if you got named, someone would come warn you in advance, tell you what to say, so your story would match. But when you make things up under torture, you implicate innocent people and that’s how Ann got dragged into it. And Chiejina. And Hope. And Kosi. And Jessica. One by one, people were named, dragged from wherever they were in the compound, and beaten.

Ann had been asleep. She was on her period. She was wearing a white satin nightgown when they pulled her out of bed and brought her before King.

King’s accusation was about sex. His response was violence on a scale that defies comprehension. He beat them with canes, iron rods, a carpenter’s pincers — which he used on Chiejina’s head until blood gushed out. When he saw the blood, according to Chiejina’s testimony, he got excited.

REVEREND KING
Yes, yes, blood has come off your head — and then told Kelechi to clean it up before it stained his rug.

HOST
He was more concerned about the rug than the man bleeding on it. Ann got the worst of it. King beat her with everything he could find.  According to Chiejina’s testimony, the beating was so severe that King ran to the kitchen for more weapons:

CHIEJENA
He dealt with Ann. He brought out a set of UTC knives and said that he would skin them alive. Then he got into his fridge and brought a blocked Eva water and stoned Ann with it. Ann was bleeding all over her body.

HOST
And the whole time, he was shouting that he would kill them. That even if his name came out, nothing would happen to him. He also poured vegetable oil into her vagina and all over her body. Made her sit up and speak in Igbo — she said she’d never seen Chiejina’s penis, that she doesn’t know what colour it was, that she was on her period. King’s response

REVEREND KING
It is good for you. You people have been lying to me.

HOST
This is a man punishing people for sins he invented, based on confessions he tortured out of them, in response to accusations that were lies from the start.

And then he decided beating wasn’t enough.

What happened next is what turned this from a case of abuse into murder.

King turned to Kelechi and told her to get fuel. She brought a large blue basin from the generator. He looked at it and said it wasn’t enough — go and add more. He told her that even if there wasn’t enough fuel in the house, he had plenty in the car. She went and filled it up.

HOST
All six victims were on their knees. Begging. Crying. King ordered Kelechi to pour the fuel on them. She did. He told her to empty everything in the basin. She did. Then he told her to step back.

The ground around them was soaked. The air would have been thick with fumes. These are people who had already been beaten for hours. Ann could barely move.

He tried a lighter first. It wouldn’t ignite. So he told Kelechi to get matches.

KELECHI
He struck the first match and it didn’t catch. They all ran away. He ordered them back again and they all came back. Back to the same place he asked them to stay in the first place, beside the gate.

HOST
They came back. Even soaked in petrol. Even watching him hold another match. They knelt back down. Because he was still their God.

KELECHI
Before he struck the second match, they were begging him. They knelt down, crying on top of their voices. We all shouted, crying out. But he wouldn’t listen. He struck the second match and they all caught fire.

HOST
When the fire caught, everyone scattered. Chiejina jumped from the wet ground to another part of the compound near the tap. Kosi’s legs caught fire. Hope ran. Jessica ran.

But Ann couldn’t run.

She’d been beaten so badly she could barely stand. And she was wearing a satin nightgown. So it burnt fast and it melted into her skin.

HOST
Kelechi heard Jessica screaming: “Ann is burning at the gate! Ann is burning at the gate!” When they got to her, Ann was on fire from head to toe. Her jelled-up hair. Her nightgown. Everything. She was moving, but she was engulfed. Kelechi said she wasn’t surprised — given how badly Ann had already been brutalised, she couldn’t escape. Others tried, but Ann could not. She was just on fire.

Chiejina was the one who tried to help after. He described pulling Ann’s nightgown off her body — it had melted and fused into her skin, along with her underwear. She was menstruating. He tugged and everything came away together. They wrapped her in a cloth, her arms frozen out to the sides because they could not be put down.

And then — after setting six people on fire — King organised. He tried to heal Ann with palm oil, groundnut oil, and blessed Goya olive oil from the church. Poured it on her body. In her mouth. On her burns. Then he decided to drive her to the hospital himself. He took her to Faith City Hospital in Ajao Estate.

But he wouldn’t go inside.

He got to the reception and said: this is as far as he can go. That he doesn’t enter hospitals. He ordered Chiejina to get the doctor, told Kelechi to stay until 11pm and come back to collect money for the bill. Then he got in his car and left.

The man who claimed he could cure HIV in 30 seconds wouldn’t walk into a hospital to check on the woman he’d just set on fire.

Even at the hospital, Ann was still processing what had happened. She kept repeating one thing: that she didn’t know the colour of Chiejina’s penis. That she’d never seen it. She was dying, and she was still trying to answer the false accusation that had started everything.

When Kelechi returned to the compound that night, the others had fled. She stayed. She said she was afraid, she’d been through years of torture, but she couldn’t run. She had nowhere to go. He’d made her disown her parents. She had no one.

Let me tell you what happened to each of the six people who were set on fire that night.

Ann Uzoh sustained burns to 65 to 70 percent of her body — face, neck, chest, abdomen, back, both arms, both thighs. Second and third degree. The pathologist explained that second degree burns go through the skin to the tissue underneath. Third degree burns reach the muscle. Ann had both. The only area spared was her perineum.

According to the doctors who treated her, anyone with burns above 50 percent could hardly ever survive. Ann had 65 percent minimum. She lived for eleven days. On August 2nd, 2006, she died of hypovolaemic shock — her body lost so much fluid through the burns that her circulatory system collapsed. Her organs failed. She was 25 years old.

Kosichukwu Henry — was burned on both legs, his hand, and the back of his head. He was the one King originally told to drive Ann to the hospital. Kosi said he was in too much pain — his legs were destroyed. Jessica had to register him at a hospital under a false name because King had instructed them all to say it was a generator accident, and they were too afraid to do otherwise. Kosi later testified that King told them he had police in his pocket and was above the law.

Chiejina — Olisa Chiejina — had been beaten with an iron rod until it bent, then attacked with carpenter’s pincers that split his head open. He was burned in the fire but managed to jump clear. He was the one who peeled Ann’s melted nightgown from her skin. He testified that even after the fire, even after everything, he was still acting under King’s influence. It was until he got to the hospital and saw Ann’s condition that something broke in him. He quietly collected his things and left.

Hope — Chizoba Onuora — had been in the church for seven years. She’d been accused of witchcraft, beaten, made to serve King naked, forced to buy her own engagement ring for a marriage he promised. She was burned that night but survived. She was one of the first to testify against King.

Vivian — the one whose false confession had started the entire chain of events — was burned but survived. She testified that when fuel poured on them, even then, they didn’t run. Not until the fire actually caught. She said it wasn’t until she physically left the compound that her mind came back. “I can now think very well,” she told the court.

Jessica  — the one King had raped, the one who fasted for seven days and given an unknown liquid — was burned but survived. She went on to testify in detail about everything.

Only Ann died. Because she’d been beaten too badly to run. Because a man who called himself God valued his rug more than her life.

Ann’s brother Ifeanyi visited her in the hospital. His testimony is the closest we get to hearing Ann’s own voice.

He found her at Faith City Hospital. He started crying when he saw her. She told him to bring his hand. Asked if he was Ifeanyi. He confirmed it. She held his hand and said she was sorry.

She was sorry. This woman, with burns covering most of her body, was apologising.

She asked if his phone could record. He said yes. She wanted it documented. Even dying, she knew she needed proof. Then she told him: “Reverend King killed me. He poured fuel on me and struck matches on me.”

When her father came to the hospital, he couldn’t handle what he saw.

RAPHAEL UZOH
I called her and she opened her eyes and said “Daddy.” She opened her eyes. I saw her eyes totally burnt. I removed the cloth. Every part of her body was totally burnt like a roasted yam. She held my hand and said… “Daddy, Reverend King has done his worst.”

HOST
Reverend King has done his worst. Those were among her last words.

HOST
When Ann died, her brother had to break it to their father. He knew Raphael would collapse, so he tried to soften it. He said: “Daddy, if Ann died now, I know you won’t worry too much because it has been long since she was with you.” Raphael told him:

RAPHAEL UZOH
If Ann is dead, tell me Ann is dead.

HOST
His son looked at him and started crying. And Raphael joined him.

He broke down in court giving this testimony. The transcript just says: “(Breaks down in tears).” And then again: “(Breaks down in tears again).” He said he couldn’t go see her body. 

So what was King’s defence? Generator accident.

That’s right. After everything — the beatings, the petrol, the matches, the witnesses testifying to exactly what happened — King’s defence was: Ann was careless with the generator and it exploded.

The detective investigating the case had a simple response. He asked a church member to start the yellow generator in front of them. It came alive at once. No damage. No burn marks. No faults. If a generator explodes violently enough to cause 65 percent burns on a human body, it doesn’t just turn back on the next day.

King’s defence witnesses were mostly church members who still believed in him. One woman, Chinenye, testified that Ann and the victims were all witches sent from the “Atlantic Ocean” to destroy King. She said they were called “The Daughters of Jezebel” and were “very, very wicked.” She was still a member of the church at the time of trial. Another witness, Prisca, constructed an elaborate story about Jessica accidentally lighting some rejected tracts on fire near the gate — a story so convoluted the judge called it,  “a tissue of fabrications that has entered the realm of fantasy.”

But the real show was King himself on the stand.

When the prosecutor asked if he ever told the victims to lie about what happened, King said something extraordinary.

REVEREND KING
I have never. But in the first instance, why would I want to tell them to say something else? Supposing God commanded me to burn seven people, I will burn them and come out and say that I burnt them. I am serving God.

HOST
Listen to that . He’s not denying the capability. He’s arguing about the source of the order. If God told me to burn people, I would. And I’d be proud of it. 

He compared himself to Jesus. Said the victims were like Judas Iscariot. Quoted scripture after scripture to explain why persecution proves you’re a real prophet. Said Moses had the same problem — the people he rescued from Egypt challenged him the whole way to the Promised Land. “It’s very normal,” he said.

And then, in the middle of his murder trial, he offered to perform a miracle for the court.

REVEREND KING
But I am here. You call my name somewhere and miracle happens there. Very simple. Bring any HIV person here now. I will cure the person in 30 seconds.

HOST
The man is on trial for murder, and he’s offering to cure HIV in thirty seconds. In the courtroom. Right there. He also said he sees God face to face. Not hears — sees. That if you’ve seen him, you’ve seen the Lord Himself. That he doesn’t read newspapers because God told him not to. He said — and this is a direct quote — “In any condition you put me, I will survive there.”

HOST
The judge was not impressed.

The judge, to his credit, saw through everything. He assessed each witness carefully. He found the victims credible — their testimonies consistent, their accounts not shaken under cross-examination. About Kelechi, he wrote something heartbreaking: he called her “pathetic” — not dismissive, but in the original sense. He said she, more than the others, appeared to have surrendered her entire free will as a human being, practically becoming a zombie.

About King himself, the judge wrote: his admission that he flogs church members, his statement that he was in church the morning after the incident rejoicing as if nothing had happened, and his nonchalance toward the family of the deceased, gave him out as — and I’m quoting the judgment — “a cruel, conceited and callous person, who cared little for human dignity. He was evasive, coy and sly.”

The judge’s summary of the defence case was devastating. He called one witness’s testimony “a tissue of fabrications that has entered the realm of fantasy.”

JUDGE
The entire defence evidence was a garble of lies, distortions and fabrications contrived to mislead the court in arriving at the truth of this case. I reject it in its entirety. I therefore find the accused person guilty as charged on each of the  counts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. I hereby convict him accordingly.

HOST
Six counts. Five attempted murders. One murder.

And the sentence:

JUDGE
And having been found guilty of murder in respect of count 6, the sentence of the court upon you CHUKWUEMEKA EZEUKO, ALIAS DR. REV. KING, is that you be hanged by the neck until you be dead. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

HOST
Death by hanging. King appealed. Lost. Appealed again. Lost again. The Supreme Court upheld the sentence in 2016. One justice remarked that the case read like a scene from a horror film.

This isn’t a Nigerian problems. When I started researching religious leaders who’ve killed their followers, I expected to find a handful of cases. What I found was a pattern that spans continents and decades.

November 1978. Jonestown, Guyana. Jim Jones convinced over 900 Americans — including more than 300 children — to drink cyanide-laced punch. Those who refused were injected with poison or shot. Before September 11th, it was the single largest loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster. And Jones wasn’t some fringe madman. He was politically connected. Met with the Vice President. Spoke at major events.

March 1997. Rancho Santa Fe, California. 39 members of Heaven’s Gate were found dead in a rented mansion. Matching black outfits. Nike sneakers. They believed a spaceship was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet and that suicide was the only way to board it. Their leader had convinced some of his male followers to surgically castrate themselves to reduce “earthly distractions.”

April 1993. Waco, Texas. David Koresh and over 80 followers — including 18 children — died after a 51-day standoff with federal agents ended in fire. Koresh had told them he was the final prophet and had taken multiple “spiritual wives,” including girls as young as 12.

March 2000. Kanungu, Uganda. Over 500 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God died when their headquarters was barricaded and set ablaze. Mass graves nearby. Strangled, stabbed, poisoned. Many of the dead were children.

And if you think this is ancient history — April 2023. Shakahola Forest, Kenya. A preacher named Paul Mackenzie told his followers to starve themselves to death to “meet Jesus.” Over 450 people dead. Children were required to starve first, then women, then men. Autopsies showed many didn’t die from starvation — they were strangled, beaten, suffocated. Some had their organs removed. Mackenzie is currently on trial. And in January 2026, Kenyan police discovered another site — 52 more bodies, 30 kilometers away.

So when we talk about Reverend King, we’re not talking about a uniquely Nigerian evil. We’re talking about a universal vulnerability — the human desire for meaning, for community, for someone who has all the answers.

The difference is in the details. The accent. The address. The specific flavour of manipulation. But the outcome? Always the same. Bodies. Broken families. And a leader who convinced ordinary people to surrender everything.

So where does that leave us?

As of this recording, Reverend King is still alive. Still in prison. Still on death row. 

But here’s what gets me: His church is still active. The Christian Praying Assembly didn’t close when King was convicted. His followers didn’t leave. Every year, they take out newspaper ads celebrating his birthday. They call him their spiritual father. Their messiah.

Image source: alternativeadverts.com

And maybe that’s the scariest part of this whole story. Not the fire. Not the beatings. Not the abuse. The fact that even after everything — after the trial, after the conviction, after testimony from people who were set on fire — there are still people who believe he is God.

I want to end with something Kelechi said in her testimony.

KELECHI
Sir, I want this court to please give me maximum security from the accused person. My life is in danger. Not only from him, but medically I am not okay. Sir, I am dying due to infection in my womb. Sir, I have the medical report. I have gone for treatment, but it is still there. And he has threatened to kill my parents, my elder sister, and her husband. Sir, I just want protection for my family. My lord, even if anything happens to me, I want to be very sure that my family is saved.

HOST
“Even if anything happens to me.” This woman — who was abused for years, who was forced to pour petrol on her fellow church members, whose body was destroyed by repeated abortions — she’s not asking for justice for herself. She’s asking for protection for her family. That’s what this case did to people. That’s the legacy of Reverend King.

Ann Uzoh was 25 years old when she died. She was a Unilag student. Raphael’s only daughter. Ifeanyi’s sister.

She died because she walked into the wrong church.

In Kenya right now, they’re still digging up bodies from Shakahola Forest. In America, survivors of Jonestown are still processing what happened nearly 50 years ago. In Uganda, families still don’t know where all the bodies are buried.

This isn’t a Nigerian story. It’s a human story. About what happens when we give one person the power of God.

May Ann’s memory be a blessing. And may we never forget the price of blind faith.

[MUSIC]

This is It’s Not Me, It’s The Devil.

Everything you heard was drawn from court records — the High Court of Lagos State, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Nigeria. The reenactments are verbatim. Word for word. Said under oath.

This podcast is powered by The Archivi.ng Fellowship program. 

If you think history matters, support their work. Visit Archivi.ng. Donate if you can. Follow them. Because if we don’t preserve these stories, we’ll keep repeating them.

Now this show is called It’s Not Me, It’s The Devil. And if you’re Nigerian, you know that phrase. It’s our national get-out-of-jail-free card. The original accountability dodge. “I didn’t do it Na the devil.”

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: In every case we’ll cover on this podcast, someone made a choice. Reverend King chose to strike that match. Jim Jones chose to mix that poison. Paul Mackenzie chose to let children starve.

The devil didn’t do that. People did.

So maybe — just maybe — we owe the devil an apology. Because we’ve been blaming him for a lot of things that are entirely, completely, undeniably… us.

This episode was researched by Ameenat Ayodimeji & Chioma Onyenwe. Written by Esther Kokori & Chioma Onyenwe. Sound Recording by Metong Minwon. Sound Design and Music by Daniel Olaoluwa

It’s Not Me, It’s The Devil is a Raconteur Productions original. Follow us wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe. 

Until next time: Take responsibility for your actions. The devil is tired of carrying your blame. Thank you.