12th August, 2014
Last weekend motorists plying the Lagos- Ibadan expressway had a harrowing experience around sprawling Redemption Camp on the expressway due to the unprecedented traffic jam caused by worshipers of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG. Thousands of the worshipers attended the week-long 62nd annual convention of the church and the attendant traffic gridlock around that axis of the road was unprecedented.
The week-long religious event, which attracted hundreds of thousands of worshipers was a success given the torrents of testimonies of miracles shared by the church’s faithful. However, while most of the pilgrims to the camp shared a whiff of blessing, millions of road users gnashed their teeth over the trauma they were subjected to especially during the last two days of the convention.
To those who are conversant with the road, they have learned to plan ahead of the church’s major activities at the camp in order not to be caught up in the traffic for several hours. Sometimes motorists completely stay off the road or find an alternate route whenever the church is having an event. But it was a harrowing weekend for travellers on that axis as the bottleneck created by the recent convention was unbearable.
Many motorists spent close to six hours on the few kilometre stretch that should ordinarily take less than 15 minutes. The spill over of the heavy traffic from the expressway was felt in the inner areas of Ojodu, Ogba, Ojota, Agege and Ikeja, resulting in the loss of several man-hours.
As the traffic jam worsened, commuters who were stranded at bus stops trekked to their destinations. Some car owners also had to abandon their vehicles and trek home.
The trauma caused by the traffic jam has been on for many years with no plan in sight to mitigate the pains of other road users both by the government and the big churches on that expressway. Apart from the Redeemed Church, other mega churches such as Mountain of Fire Ministries and Deeper Life Bible Church, which organise various programmes nearly on a weekly basis are the major culprits. With the plan by RCCG to construct a 3-Kilometre auditorium without a corresponding plan on how it will contain the upsurge in the traffic towards the camp, there are fears that the traffic situation on that road would worsen.
In view of this, we are calling on the church leadership, especially Pastor Enoch Adeboye, to take into consideration the pains millions of motorists on that road are subjected to frequently. We observed that the perennial traffic jam is already creating anger and bad blood between the church, travellers on that road and the people who reside in that axis.
We believe that as the biggest of the churches in that axis and with the resources available to the church, RCCG can collaborate with the government to ameliorate the problem by constructing its own dedicated lane and an overhead bridge across the road at the camp for inward and outward flow of traffic to the church. The church should consider such project its own corporate social responsibility to the teeming masses that ply that road daily. The dedicated lanes could be tolled to generate revenue for their maintenance.
Also on the part of the Federal Government, many have expressed disappointment with the way its supervising agencies have looked the other way while traffic on such a major highway is disrupted for several hours by church activities. In many developed nations, such highways have perimeter fences along it to prevent traffic spills into the road. Since there is no such barriers on that road, we call on the government to look seriously into any form of obstruction by religious groups on that road and clear it so that travellers could have some reprieve after being subjected to decades of trauma.