President Muhammadu Buhari is reportedly concerned about the proximity of the Villa Chapel to his bedroom window and wants it relocated; a move that several Presidency officials have denied.
The chapel was built and inaugurated by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, who deliberately built the church to be close to his official residence so that he could “enjoy worship and prayers from the comfort of his bedroom”.
President Buhari is a Muslim and has reportedly complained about the noise from the chapel. Some aides of the president had already made efforts to stop the use of the facility by Christian worshippers on August 30. As a prelude, security agents prevented the Villa Chapel choristers from entering the building for their weekly rehearsal on Saturday, August 29, 2015.
However, uproar over the development ensued, which caused Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, a Christian who also worships at the chapel, to contact Buhari before the security men gave way for service to be conducted that day.
In a move that suggests the Presidency is not giving up in its bid to relocate the chapel, the children’s church section of the chapel has been shut and some rooms have been converted to shops for storing food items.
“We had to beg them to allow us to remove our property,” said an official of the church who did not want to be named. “The children’s church has been turned into a store. As a result of the unforeseen development, we had to collapse some facilities to accommodate the children and keep our worship going.
That was why the Chaplain said that the church had not been shut but ‘we only had some procedural issues that needed to be sorted out’.”
Femi Adesina, the Presidential spokesman, has denied that the chapel will be moved.
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