Lord’s Chosen Church Lagos Is Closed by State Govt over Fears of Disease Outbreak

The headquarters of the Lord’s Chosen and Charismatic Revival Church on Ijesha, Oshodi-Apapa Expressway, Lagos, southwest Nigeria has been closed indefinitely by Lagos State Government over environmental nuisance.
Pastor Lazarus Muoka is the founder and General Overseer of the Lord’s Chosen Church.
Ministry of Environment officials shut down the church on Sunday morning and prevented the worshippers from having their Sunday service usually attended by thousands of faithful.
It has now emerged that the church does not have solid waste disposal facility. Waste is burnt inside the church premises, thereby exposing the lives of its worshippers to serious health hazard.
A sizeable part of the expansive church lies on the Odo Asimawu Canal drainage channel, thereby hampering proper flow of storm water.
All of the church’s human waste is discharged into the canal after the church built its toilets on the canal.
The State government has had to seal off the entire church premises in order prevent an outbreak of epidemic.
The church was accused of defacing and degrading the environment and refusing to abate the nuisance even after it had been served abatement notice to upgrade the environment.
Mr. Tunji Bello, the Commissioner for the Environment said the church had committed lots of environmental abuse which it must abate before the massive structure could be re-opened by the government as such illegality could not be tolerated any longer.
Bello insisted that the church would only be re-opened if it constructed new toilets as well as bagged its solid waste as well as managed such waste properly. He said that the church must build a sewage septic tank for the treatment of waste water.
“The conditions for reopening the church must include: complete sanitization of the entire church environment, putting in place proper solid waste facility, stoppage of refuse burning, removal of all structures on drainage channel, building of new toilet facilities, evacuation of solid waste dumped inside the canal and so on,” said the commissioner.