During several religious ceremonies in Nigeria, attendees witnessed what appeared to be a true miracle: a woman would arrive with an apparently deformed arm and, after a pastor prayed for her, the limb would slowly return to its normal position.
The problem was that the same scene began repeating itself in different churches.
The woman was Bose Olasukanmi, 44, and in 2020 she was arrested by Nigerian police intelligence officers, who had been investigating the suspicious performances for months.
According to the police investigation and the testimony Olasukanmi gave after her arrest, the supposed miracle was a staged performance.
The woman had suffered an injury to her right arm and, as she explained, a friend named Fatila Musa taught her how to hold it in a way that made it appear to be permanently twisted or paralyzed.
Then came the moment of the supposed healing.
The pastor prayed, spoke in tongues, and ordered the “evil spirit” to leave the woman’s body. Olasukanmi would then slowly lower her arm until it was in a normal position.
The congregation celebrated, convinced that they had witnessed a supernatural healing.
But there was an even stranger detail: after each performance, the woman would quickly disappear from the church, precisely to prevent anyone who knew her from recognizing her and discovering that the same “miracle” had already occurred elsewhere. When suspicions grew, they even began using recordings of the performances.
Olasukanmi said that she was taken to churches in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abakaliki, where she performed several times. She received money for each performance; according to her own account, she received amounts ranging from 7,000 to 15,000 naira, depending on the occasion.
The woman said that she agreed to participate because she was going through a desperate financial situation and needed money to survive and treat her arm.
“I lost consciousness because suffering weakened my ability to reason“, she explained after being arrested.
The deception, however, mainly benefited those who organized the supposed healings. According to the police, congregations could grow after attendees spread word of the supposed miracle, while some worshippers gave substantial sums of money hoping to receive a blessing themselves.
Eventually, the police located and arrested Olasukanmi. She said that she was willing to cooperate in identifying the pastors and other people involved.
And she left a warning for those who had witnessed those “miracles”:
“I knew it was a fake performance that deceived many believers and enriched the false pastors and prophets.”
The case became one of the most striking examples of how a supposed supernatural healing could be carefully staged to convince an entire congregation.
Watch the clip below: