https://businessday.ng/columnist/article/the-jehovahs-witnesses-cult-tears-families-apart-heres-how-it-tore-mine-1/
Subscription only so I copied it and posted the article below.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses cult tears families apart. Here’s
how it tore mine
David Hundeyin Nov 9, 2022
In April 1974, a final-year university student nearly made a decision that would have changed the course of history for dozens of people.
While studying at the University of Ghana on an American-sponsored OAU scholarship, 23-year-old David joined an interesting new Christian group called Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Since he joined the group, he had stopped smoking and the feeling of accomplishment had convinced him that he was in the right place, despite his fiercely Anglican and Traditionalist upbringing.
Party like it’s 1974
The Jehovah’s Witnesses believed that the end of the world – Armageddon as they termed it – was going to happen sometime in 1975.
As he attended their meetings three times every week, the message was hammered in with increasing urgency, with articles in their literature and messages from the American HQ explicitly urging members to stop their regular pursuits and prepare for the end of the world.
David decided to drop out of university and spend the rest of 1974 serving as a Jehovah's Witness missionary, preaching the word about the impending end of the world.
At the time, David was using part of his generous scholarship grant to fund nursing school programs for two of his sisters back home in Lagos, Nigeria, and dropping out would have meant sacrificing their education. But none of that mattered, after all, who needs nurses in paradise? Armageddon was coming in 1975!
By luck or providence, he happened to mention his plan to quit school to an American Jehovah Witness missionary, who unknown to him had started having doubts about the “1975 doctrine” and the JW faith as a whole.
This missionary told him, “David, the Bible does not say that students will not be saved. The Bible also says that you should finish what you start.”
These words from the mouth of a stranger from Ohio were what stopped my father, David Fakunle Hundeyin from dropping out of university in 1974.
Without them, I probably would not be here, and the lives of my cousins – among them doctors, pilots, engineers and management professionals – would probably be very different today.
Gaslighting, obfuscation, and diversion: The JW Masterclass
Of course, 1975 came and went. We had the coup that removed Yakubu Gowon; we had the end of the Vietnam War, but there was no Armageddon.
My dad finished his program with First Class Honours and came back to Nigeria, which was then going through an oil boom.
Within a decade he got the wife, the children, the cars, the house, and all that good stuff that was never supposed to happen in our pre-Armageddon world, but through all of this, he never stopped associating with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
He got off very lightly with his own 1975 saga. In Nigeria and around the world, thousands of JW adherents sold their property, quit their jobs, left school, and even took out massive loans before December 31, 1975.
When the promised end of the world did not come, you might imagine that the group would have faced an internal crisis. That did not happen.
A few people left, but most JWs like my dad remained, and simply moved on from the event. “God’s True Religion” could never be wrong after all, so it was only a test of their faith.
Within a few years, the JW organisation itself began to edit its official history of what happened.
By the time I was born in 1990, the story was that its 1975 prediction – which it repeatedly printed in its literature and disseminated through public lectures – was not in fact its official position, but was merely a rumour carried by some members.
The organisation even began using the story as a cautionary tale, portraying itself as the victim of excited predictors, as against the sole instigator that it blatantly was.
Those who left were “apostates,” and anyone within the group who liked to ask questions was very quickly identified and shut down.
One of the most defining memories of my childhood was sitting in a JW Thursday night “Service Meeting,” pretending not to be thoroughly disgusted with the ongoing question-and-answer segment on an article titled “Beware of the trap of independent thinking.”
The reason I chose this story to lead this article is that before talking about Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is extremely important to understand the underlying psyche of the group.
There is a surfeit of starched shirts, bright smiles, and social graces whenever Jehovah’s Witnesses are in the conversation, so to the uninitiated, this must mean that they are just another harmless, quirky, pseudo-Christian group in a society that is already punch-drunk on religion.
That would be a deadly mistake. These guys are really bad news.
You don’t have to take it from me, despite my roughly 20 years of experience of life as a member of this group. You can look at the story of 22-year-old Tega Esabunor and draw your own conclusions.
“Thank Jehovah you’re alive. Now let’s sue the doctor for saving your life”
Tega was born to Jehovah's Witness parents on April 19, 1997. According to court records, within a month of his birth, he fell severely ill and his mother Rita Esabunor rushed him to the Chevron Clinic where the doctor diagnosed him with anemia.
To save his life, he needed a blood transfusion, but his parents insisted that this was a no-no. Jehovah’s Witnesses are not permitted to accept blood transfusions on the pain of being disfellowshipped, which is apparently based on a Bible scripture where Moses orders the Israelites never to eat blood.
Putting aside the cockamamie doctrinal position for a moment, meant that under JW policy, it would be preferable for Tega to die an avoidable death than to receive a blood transfusion.
Choosing to respect his Hippocratic oath over a crackpot religious belief, Dr. Tunde Faweya obtained an ex-parte order permitting him to administer a life-saving blood transfusion on Tega.
The one-month-old baby lived, and his parents took him home. Now the story enters Jehovah's Witness levels of unbelievable.
A few days later on May 15, 1997, Tega’s parents sued Dr. Faweya and Chevron Clinic at the High Court for giving their son a blood transfusion that saved his life. They lost the case.
Then took it to the Appeal Court, Lagos Division. This dragged on for years, and then they lost that too. So they took the case to the Supreme Court. Through all of this, Tega was growing up from a child into a teenager, then a young adult.
His version of normal was to spend his entire life as the subject of a legal battle between parents insisting that he should have died, and a bunch of strangers replying, “Are you people mad?”
Finally, in April 2019, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Dr. Faweya and Chevron Clinic, finally drawing a line under a 22-year legal saga.
Growing up as the child of a prominent JW, I often heard about this case, though I never met Tega in person, unfortunately.
I clearly remember the feeling of shock and dread when I realised that Tega’s parents were not crazy outliers, but were just normal Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In other words, given the right circumstances, my parents would do the exact same thing to me.