Tourism and hospitality businesses in and around Ikotun, a Lagos suburb, may be in for harsher days ahead following the death, Saturday, of Prophet TB Joshua.
Ikotun is home to the Synagogue Church Of All Nations (SCOAN), where the late prophet was founder and senior pastor.
TB Joshua’s SCOAN has over the years continued to attract thousands of visitors, especially religious pilgrims. On the back of this, numerous hotels, tour companies, car hire services, hostels, eateries, bureaux de change, among others sprung up to service these visitors.
These businesses, however, faced difficulties after September 12, 2014 when a hostel facility owned by the church collapsed, killing about 117 pilgrims, mostly from South Africa. It was a sad development that warranted several government inquiries and negatively impacted the number of visitors to the church, estimated at over 2 million annually. They soon bounced back, though.
The woes returned in 2020 when, in line with Covid-19 pandemic regulations, the church was closed and was yet to be reopened as at June 5, 2021, when the prophet died. About 60 percent of the accommodation facilities in the area have been shut down since the closure of the church in March 2020, sending thousands of workers into the labour market, BusinessDay gathered.
The death of Prophet TB Joshua is bound to push these businesses into harsher times, James Omorieme, a hotel owner and member of Pilgrims Hostels Association of Nigeria, told BusinessDay.
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Omorieme said most pilgrims who came to seek spiritual help from the prophet may no longer come following his death, or at least not in great numbers like when he was alive.
BusinessDay gathered from the Pilgrims Hostels Association of Nigeria that there are about 3,500-bed spaces of different categories for all the hotels in Ikotun and that these incidents are happening when most members of the association have collected bank loans to expand, renovate or build new hotels to meet the growing accommodation demand from pilgrims from across the world.
Omorieme said before the September 2014 accident, the hotels in the area had 100 percent occupancy rate three days of every week due to the programmes in the church. The accident affected occupancy, but it was only temporary. But the pandemic reduced occupancy to 40 percent, forcing about 60 percent to shut down. With the demise of the prophet, the hotelier noted that the remaining 40 percent that are struggling to stay afloat and hoping that the church will open soon are now going to close down or turn their properties to residential use.
Furthermore, the SCOAN Prayer Mountain Resort, also located in Ikotun, which was earlier billed to open soon was a big opportunity that drove hoteliers to secure loans to expand their accommodation offerings.
Many had thought the prayer resort, acclaimed to be the biggest in Nigeria, would be opened by the prophet himself on June 12, 2021 to mark his 58th birthday.
The fear now is that the resort may not open again. Many tourism stakeholders reckon the resort may not be able to take off again as the visioner, Prophet TB Joshua, is no more, dealing a heavy blow to the tourism sector.
Many other hoteliers see the death of the prophet as the final nail to their once-thriving business. They fear that it may be difficult for anyone to be able to fit into Prophet TB Joshua’s big shoes, considering he was a global personality whose influence and followership cut across the rich and poor in the world.
“I retired as a bank manager, and in the corporate world it is very easy to change the baton when the need arises. But this is spiritual, followers, the faithful, and pilgrims have personal attachment to the prophet. It is going to be very difficult to get visitors in big numbers again and our hotel rooms are going to be empty for a long time because the prophet is no more,” said Jude Unanka, a hotelier and church member.
Jamiu Daramola, a car hire operator, decried that business has never been the same for a long time, and with the death of the prophet, it would be total closure and relocation to another area.
“We have a car hire association that works with accredited tour operations and travel agencies which are coordinated by the church. The coordination brings money to us even when you are not working because we signed an agreement. Now everything is gone and I am going back to the airport where they selected some of us to form the association,” he said.
Daramola described SCOAN as an efficient organisation amid world-class coordination for all calibre of visitors from across the world, which offered business opportunities to many – from hotel to car hire, tour, eatery and even immigration and aviation.
“My fear is that those left behind may not be able to carry on the way the prophet coordinated the church, logistics and philanthropy activities,” Daramola said.
Eateries and accredited food vendors that supply food to pilgrims are also affected as they move from skeletal service to complete shutdown.
However, considering anticipated few visits occasioned by the death of the prophet, some residents think that the price of properties and rent in Ikotun will start coming down as hoteliers are no longer under pressure to expand existing hotels or buy residential houses to convert to hotels in order to meet the growing demand for accommodation.
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