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Jubilant worshippers return to Lagos mosques

Published 07/08/2020, 17:19
Updated 07/08/2020, 17:24
© Reuters.

By Seun Sanni and Nneka Chile
LAGOS, Aug 7 (Reuters) - In a crowded district of Lagos
Island, 44-year-old Isiaka Babatunde weaves through a throng of
people and stops at a shop piled high with hats.
Wearing a green face mask and a crisply pressed traditional
white suit, he carefully selects a matching white kufi cap on
his way to join fellow Muslims at a mosque for the first time in
four months in Nigeria's commercial capital.
"I am very happy today," Babatunde told Reuters. "We have
been praying at home all this while due to the pandemic. There
was nothing we could do about it."
Lagos state is allowing in-person religious services from
Friday for the first time since it implemented a lockdown in
March to halt the spread of the coronavirus. Services can be no
more than 50% full, and only held once per week. Lagos is the epicentre of the outbreak in Nigeria, Africa's
most populous country. The state, which is home to the
20-million-strong megacity of the same name, currently has
15,627 confirmed cases and 192 deaths.
Religious services have been linked to mass outbreaks
elsewhere in the world, including France and the United States.
But religion plays a large role in the lives of most
Nigerians, who are broadly split between Christianity and Islam.
Many are keen to return to the services and communities they
left at the start of the outbreak.
In the streets surrounding the mosque, where worshippers
prayed at a distance, there was little space between the vendors
and shoppers. So some felt the mosque, with its restrictions,
was safe.
"I was scared of coming today," said female entrepreneur
Rafiat Ajoke-Thomas. "But when I learnt that ... it is going to
be like a hundred people, I felt like coming."

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