A Sunday morning drive along a Broad Street of History

On this Sunday morning, your friend, Sir Sina Thorpe, retired permanent secretary, a knight of the Methodist Church, was being unveiled as the new Lay President of the Archdiocese of Lagos. Sina was a gentleman and a jolly good fellow who had served pro bono as Master of Ceremony at the public launch of your book, PELEWURA, and he was worth the honour of this long drive down the length of Broad Street, Lagos, to attend his church.

The traffic was light.

“That old insult on Nigerian Christians still rankles, despite the recent apology issued from London by the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

Coming down the MUSON Bye-pass, you encountered the perimeter fence of St Saviour’s Church. Its deep interior housed a congregation made up of the high and mighty in government and commerce in Nigeria. Its original name was Colonial Church. It was inaugurated in the Hall of nearby Kings College in 1909 by Bishop Tugwell, Bishop of Lagos, Bishop Oluwole, and Rev. L.S. Noble—the Colonial Chaplain. In 1911, Rev. Noble moved the congregation to a half-completed building with the name of Colonial St. Saviour’s Church on the present site.

The completed church was commissioned in 1932. The congregation remained mostly European, including the Governor General of Nigeria. It was said of Sir James Robertson that the Sunday service never commenced until he was seated on his pew.

‘Colonial’ has since been dropped from the name of the church, and it is now St Saviour’s Church. And the congregation are Nigerians.

You watched well-dressed people hurrying across the road to join the service while area boys milled around the Racecourse side.

As you progressed beyond the General Hospital, Odan, you came upon the First Baptist Church—a classical old brown building with two columns built into the front, ending in a commanding point at the top. Built in 1849, it was one of the first churches planted on Lagos Island, even as Baptist missionaries were venturing deep into the hinterland to establish schools and hospitals as far afield as Iwo and Ogbomosho. Like many of the old churches on Broad Street, the First Baptist Church embodied the traditions of many families who had worshipped there for several generations and whose children continued to come to worship there on Sundays, sometimes travelling considerable distances from their present homes.

At the CMS traffic lights, you beheld, out of the left corner of your eye, the enthralling architecture of Christ Church Cathedral. The sound of its stately pipe organs filtered out into the rough and tumble of the marina. First built in 1869, this neo-Gothic version with its pointe arches, housing the Bishop’s residence and offices, was completed in 1946. The relics of Dr Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first African Anglican Bishop, lay buried there, with a cenotaph in his honour. He had undergone contumely and the humiliation of sack from the Niger Mission, his major life’s work, which took Christianity into the interior of Nigeria, in a conspiracy concocted by lesser white ‘men of God’ who believed black men should not head the Church or even become Bishops. That old insult on Nigerian Christians still rankles, despite the recent apology issued from London by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

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At Tinubu Square, you slowly went past the Methodist Church of the Trinity, built in 1862, designed like an inverted ark. You remembered a pleasant evening spent there some years ago when the Sagoes, including your friend and erstwhile teacher Professor Aba Sagoe, organised Community Hymn Singing in honour of their educationist parents – Dr Kwao and Mrs Jumoke Sagoe, who died four decades ago.

The theme of race in the history of the Nigerian Church grew thicker as you went further down Broad Street and reached the gate of African Church Cathedral, Bethel. On Sunday, January 13, 1901, a great schism occurred in the Anglican Church. J.K. Coker, a charismatic businessman and the People’s Warden of St Paul’s Breadfruit Church down the road, led the majority of the congregation out of the Church in open secession after a bitter internal dispute centred around accusations of racist disrespect by Bishop Tugwell, Anglican Bishop of Lagos. This was the beginning of the African Church, symbolised now by this great edifice, which has since spread its branches all around Nigeria.

Approaching the old UTC building, which looked dirty and decrepit, like much of the architecture on this once-great street of your youth, St Paul’s Anglican Church Breadfruit, founded in 1852, was on your right-hand side. The ‘Breadfruit’ referred to a tree at the site where slaves were tied, preparatory to being embarked on slave ships on the Marina, never to return, in the days of yore.

You were now approaching your destination.

To get to Wesley Cathedral, Olowogbowo required you to navigate through back streets to ‘Chapel Street’, an alleyway between ancient slum apartments with a foetid gutter running across it. The Church, built in 1849, was an imposing neo-gothic structure with a belfry. It stood on elevated ground.

The service was just beginning, and several Bishops were lined up to file in. You recognised the sash of ALARHOSPS, the retired ‘PermSecs’ of Lagos, in the audience, and made a beeline for their ranks.

The new Archdiocesan Lay President looked demure in his official robes as he was ceremoniously presented to the congregation in the solemn service.

There were hugs and photographs, and the inevitable pack of jollof rice.

It occurred to you as you headed back home that if Lagos ever truly became a tourist haven, some smart young fellow would soon be selling a package bus tour titled ‘A TOUR OF OLD HISTORICAL CHURCHES ON BROAD STREET’ to local and foreign tourists. Of course, the government would need to support by cleaning up the slums and shanties around the sites.

Some other governments might wonder if bulldozers should not take down the ancient structures, which were now standing on prime real estate, to make way for skyscrapers.

Nigeria, after all, was a nation of rich History and few Monuments.