Church-hopping, and a little helter-skelter on a Sunday in Lagos
Looking ahead, the day looks like a spell of chaos that can only be managed, not regimented.
You assemble your outfit carefully before you set out from home. The cap for the Ikeja event is a blue fìlà. For the Medical Society’s gathering at Ajele, which is scheduled for the same time – 10am, at the other end town, the colour is green. Your flowing white agbada would sit nicely with both.
At the Chapel of Christ the Light, in Alausa, the Association of Lagos State Retired Heads of Service and Permanent Secretaries – ALARHOSPS- are having a Thanksgiving Service to round off their annual week of celebration and giving back to society.
As you take your place on a front pew, you are struck by the neatly understated splendour of the Chapel’s ambience.
You always feel a sense of awe sitting with the doyens of the Civil Service of Lagos, some of whom served from the halcyon days of Alhaji Jakande. Older retirees talk about the various Governors they have worked with – military and civilian, with their passions and foibles. In some ways the Lagos people live in today is the product of the thoughts and actions of some of these people. There is an inexorable attrition process as time grinds on, and this imbues the camaraderie with a certain intensity, whether it is at the brain-storming annual Summit, the Church or Mosque Thanksgiving, or the biennial group birthday celebrations where even the old and stuffy relax and dance to disco music.
The Church Service is filled with Praise and Worship. There is another group of celebrants at the Service -the Light Family Fellowship. They are celebrating their 15th Anniversary.
All the while your eye is on the clock. By twelve noon, you reason, you should be heading hot-foot for St Peter’s Church, Faji, for the celebration of the 37th Anniversary of the Medical Society of the Anglican Diocese of Lagos, of which you are a member.
“After the sermon and the Thanksgiving at the altar, you take a side door into the sunlight and begin the journey to the Island. It is almost one o’clock.”
Your Google map is showing a short-cut to your destination through Adeniji Adele, via Anikantamo. It is madness, but you decide to follow it. As soon as you turn off the Third Mainland bridge, you are confronted with a warren of narrow side-streets. Some of the roads are water-logged and impassable, a fact which is apparently lost on Google Map. You, the chronicler of PELEWURA, the amazon who lived and moved mountains in these parts, have to admit that your familiarity with the alleyways navigated by Pelewura, and still trodden to this day by the dense population of the decaying inner-city, is more literary than literal.
At length you emerge onto Omididun. Getting to the end of it, you navigate to Campbell Street, and from there turn into Ajele Street.
Remembering to change your cap to the green one, you rush into the building, ready with apologies.
St Peter’s Church, Faji is a legacy Yoruba Church, and a case can be made for recognising it as historically the most important Anglican Church ‘for the masses’, and the first purpose-built Church in Nigeria. Its origins followed on the advent of the first Christian Sermon that was preached in Lagos in 1852 by James White, an indigenous Catechist from Badagry, whose missionary work was supported by Rev Charles Gollmer and Rev Ajayi Crowther. Gollmer spent some weeks in a tent at Ebute Ero with Patrick White, before moving on to establish the Breadfruit Mission. This was to be a temporary abode while he built his main mission house at Ehin Igbeti – the site of the present Cathedral. The Missionaries decided that a Church should be built in the thickly populated Oko Faji for ease of evangelism. The foundation stone was laid in 1853. The Church was relocated to its present site on Ajele Street in 1860.
You need not have worried about lateness – they take their time here; you say to yourself with a smile, slipping into a pew.
The Church Service is only halfway through.
Soon you are joining the Medical Society for rededication and prayers at the altar. The vicar is a man you know. You shake hands.
You all go to the back of the Church and dance forward for thanksgiving.
Then the whole congregation joins you and the singing and dancing starts again.
This was the first Yoruba Church, after all, you reason, enjoying the spirit.
The talk at the reception in the hall upstairs afterwards focuses on a need for accessible healthcare to be provided for the masses.
A Church Clinic was opened in this Church forty-seven years ago. It was the first Church Clinic in the whole of Lagos. Twelve years later, following the example of this Church, a Medical Commission was inaugurated for the whole Diocese. Healthcare is provided to parishioners as well as to people of other faiths in the community.
An official announces that the Centenary City project going up in Ibeju-Lekki will contain a hospital, and a Rehabilitation Centre for drug addicts, as part of the Anglican Church’s service to society.
Criticism has often been made that religious bodies generally have not been actively involved in trying to solve the pressing problems of Nigerians. Healthcare and community support have tended to be token. The lack of Values, which makes Nigerians corrupt and unreliable in their daily lives, has not been defined as an existential problem for Religion to tackle.
The food at the reception is scrumptious Isàlè-Èkó fare.
The speeches are still going on as you make your discrete exit.
There is one more stop – a house-call with a patient on Victoria Island. No cap except the professional this time, and the agbada will have to come off.
It is a memorable Sunday already, in a special way.
