…As CAN insists religious rights must be respected
Leaders of the Deeper Life Bible Church have disclosed that the church and the leadership of Surulere Local government are in reconciliatory mode following the recent demolition of one of its worship centres at 36, Aina Street, Lawanson, within the council area.
“It was all a process of coming together to explore the opportunity to bring the whole matter to a peaceful end. As you are all aware, one of our district churches within this domain was pulled down,” Taiwo Kupolati, senior advocate of Nigeria, a member of Deeper Life Bible Church, told journalists after a reconciliatory meeting with the leadership of local government.
According to him, members of the church have established the church building for over 18 years, and have not had issues with successive governments in the local council.
He disclosed that in the last 18 years, there has been no occasion for the members of the Deeper Life Church to be disturbed or for any government action taken against anyone there until now. “When this crisis started, the matter went to court,” Kupolati said.
According to him, the demolition was carried out despite the matter being in court. He added that following the action of the local authorities, members of the church in that locality currently do not have a place to worship.
“While the matter was in court, some officials went there and completely demolished it without respect to the court process. Even though the court also gave orders granting injunctions against conducting any act that would be an affront to the authority of the court; that was not respected.
“So, as a church that believes in going about issues in a peaceful way, this matter was reported to the police, and the police directed that we should all come together and explore the way to achieve a resolution,” he said.
Christian Nwogu, a lawyer and representative of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) at the reconciliatory meeting, said the umbrella body want to ensure that the church’s rights is protected across the board.
According to him, having a place of worship is a constitutional matter protected by the constitution, and therefore must be respected even by government.
CAN also called on the government, across the 3-tiers of governments to respect the religious rights of the citizens of the country. “Deeper Life is only pioneering this and they are doing a very great job.”
Speaking on the current position of the law in respect to the demolished church structure, Nwogu said, “But the status of this matter now is that the court has restored the church there. The church right now is recognized as the owner. The court already told those people; put back the church there. That is the current position right now.
“There were also representatives of Zone 2 to advise the Surulere Local Government on the verdict of the church, but it is a continuous negotiation and hearing of the court.”
Alfred Ogene, a representative of the Deeper Life Bible Church at the meeting, said that the reconciliatory move was to look at the different options available to both parties, he expressed the optimism that the Local Government authorities would do the right thing.
Ogene said: “We have been in the meeting for the past two hours and at the end of the day, we looked at all that transpired, all that happened, the various meetings we had, which culminated into demolishing the Deeper Life Bible Church, and we took exception to that.
“But this is more of a reconciliatory meeting. That is why we spent quite a lot of time to look at the various options in terms of how do we move forward, even though they equally accepted that they went ahead and demolished and it was proved to them that they did not follow through the legal leg.
“At the end of the day, it was resolved that they will get back to us—in whatever way, put it in writing or whichever option they deem fit.”
