Along Nigeria’s ‘spiritual highway’, prayer camps create a new urban future

Source: The Conversation – Africa

The highway between Lagos and Ibadan was built in 1978 at the height of Nigeria’s oil boom. Lagos is the country’s largest city, with an estimated population of over 20 million, and Ibadan the third-largest and home to a globally renowned university.

But the boom years are over and rising traffic and decades of neglect have turned the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway into one of Nigeria’s deadliest motorways, earning it the nickname “highway of death”.

Yet even as the 127km stretch of road has faltered as a transport corridor linking north and south, it has flourished as a stage for public religion. Today, lined with sprawling prayer camps, it’s also known as the “spiritual highway”. Religious billboards have replaced road signs and religious camps have been established along the route.

For years my research as an anthropologist has explored how multi-faith settings challenge conventional ideas of religion. I have studied the more than 30 religious organisations that have established vast prayer camps along the course of the highway since the 1980s. Attracting tens of thousands of worshippers seeking health and wealth, they have transformed the expressway into an urban spiritual centre.

These sites consist of vast, factory-like prayer halls. They offer a wide range of facilities, including shopping malls, restaurants, banks, hotels, health clinics, schools, and even universities. As a result, many have evolved into “prayer cities” that combine urban and religious worlds within a single space.

While drawing vast crowds during religious programmes, a growing number of camps provide permanent residence for members seeking to escape what they perceive as the moral corruption of urban life. By supplying services often lacking in Lagos and Ibadan, like reliable electricity, a clean and secure environment, and spiritual redemption, these camps have developed into “religiocities”.

My research shows that the prayer camps lining the expressway challenge enduring portrayals of Nigeria – particularly its cities – as chaotic, dysfunctional, and driven by religious tensions.

One of the ways they do this is by blurring the lines between religious traditions. Muslim prayer camps borrow from Pentecostal models, Christians attend Muslim programmes. And many Lagosians move between these religious spaces in search of healing, prosperity, or spiritual fulfilment. These religious crossovers point to a faith landscape shaped less by fixed identities than by interaction and exchange.

The camps also reveal how urban development and religious life are deeply intertwined. Through investments in land, infrastructure, education and healthcare, religious organisations have emerged as key forces in the making of new urban spaces.

Faith at the crossroads

The best-known prayer camp along the expressway, found 46km from Lagos, is Redemption City. It’s the headquarters of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. Founded in 1983, this 3,500-hectare camp was the first to be established along the highway and continues to be the largest of its kind.

It has a resident population of about 250,000 and an estimated half a million workers. To serve their needs, Redemption City has developed its own electricity, water and waste-management infrastructure. It has been transformed into a city-like environment in both scale and functionality.

Added to this, a monthly Holy Ghost Service draws hundreds of thousands of worshippers to an all-night programme of prayer, preaching, healing and deliverance.

Redemption City’s success spurred other religious organisations to establish camps along the expressway. One of them is the Nasrul-Lahi-L-Fathi Society of Nigeria, which opened its camp in 2000. An official told me:

We didn’t want to be left behind by the Pentecostal churches, so we followed their example and bought land along the expressway … We are investing heavily in developing our camp.

Once a month, Muslims travel from Lagos and beyond for asalatu, a mass prayer gathering held on Sunday mornings to coincide with Pentecostal services. Mirroring Pentecostal formats, the event combines praise worship, prayer requests, testimonies and thanksgiving offerings.

The close proximity of Christian and Muslim camps has encouraged mutual borrowing of spatial forms and religious practices. During my fieldwork in Redemption City, I met a young professional who moved between Pentecostal and Muslim prayer gatherings to “multiply” his chances of success.

Such practices, often described by Lagosians as “religious shopping”, suggest that the city’s religious landscape is shaped less by rigid boundaries than by reciprocal exchange.

Christianity and Islam are not the only forces reshaping the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Near Ibadan stands Guru Maharaj Ji’s 40-hectare ashram – a Hindu term for the place where the pupils of a guru or spiritual leader are taught. Lacking the monumental architecture of the neighbouring Christian and Muslim camps, and distinguished by images of Hindu deities, the camp appears as an unlikely presence within this landscape.

The site centres on a temple where thousands of followers gather weekly to hear teachings that blend African religious traditions, Hinduism and Rastafarianism. Presenting these as complementary paths to spiritual liberation, Guru Maharaj Ji rejects Christianity and Islam as foreign, imperial faiths. Instead, he draws on traditions he sees as closer to Africa’s indigenous spiritual heritage.

The ashram appeals to urban Nigerians looking for a different spiritual path than the Pentecostal megachurches and Muslim mass movements that shape life in Lagos and Ibadan. Followers often describe Christianity and Islam as restrictive. As one told me:

Guru Maharaj Ji teaches us practical exercises for a better life. His knowledge is divine; it’s not book knowledge.

Rethinking the city

The prayer camps illustrate the strong links between urban growth and religious practice. Religion does not simply occupy the spaces along the highway, it’s helped develop them. Through investments in land, infrastructure and municipal services, religious organisations have emerged as powerful agents of making orderly and secure urban spaces.

The religious groups have taken over the role of the state. The withering of the state’s ability to play a meaningful role in urban development stretches back to the 1980s when structural adjustment and neoliberal reforms led to the privatisation of state functions. Religious organisations emerged as influential public actors.

A second factor behind the developments was soaring land prices and limited space in Lagos that pushed fast-growing churches to the city’s outskirts. The forested land along the expressway offered room to grow. It was gradually folded into the expanding urban corridor between Lagos and Ibadan.

Prayer camps challenge stereotypes of African cities as deficient and Nigerian cities as sites of religious conflict. My research shows that they provide viable urban alternatives to Lagos, fostering coexistence and everyday forms of conviviality across religious boundaries.

In the process, they shift attention away from dominant portrayals of African cities as spaces of deprivation and “slums”. Instead, they highlight Lagos and surrounds as a site of creativity, innovation and emerging urban futures.

Marloes Janson received research funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Bonn, Germany, and Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, Germany.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/20/along-nigerias-spiritual-highway-prayer-camps-create-a-new-urban-future/