A Church and a Mosque on Adebayo Street, Jos

I am a Christian. My faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God has been shaped by countless personal experiences over the years. My immediate elder brother, Okùnadé Adigun, is a Babaláwo, a popular one with a chieftaincy title within the Ìṣẹ̀ṣe community in the Ìbàràpá region. My eldest brother, Babárìndé Okùnadé, is Muslim.

While shooting the documentary “A Road From Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ to Jos” with Àyánkọ́lá Àyánwuyì, one aspect that really got me emotional and proud of being Yorùbá is the history of the First Baptist Church and the Nurudeen Islamic Society Mosque cohabiting side by side for more than 110 years on Adebayo Street, Jos.

Before I started living in Jos, I had heard different versions of this story, one claims a Christian and Muslim Adebayo twin contributed money for a church and a mosque, another claims it’s a Muslim and Christian twin, with a traditionalist Ìdòwú in the mix.

A chapter of our documentary tells the true story.

The Nigerian president is Muslim, married to a Redeemed Christian Church pastor. I grew up seeing Alhaji marry Prophetess; Muslims, Christians, and Traditionalists cohabiting peacefully in love. But recently, some elements within Yorùbáland now put religion before humanity, and it’s very sad.

I’ve never liked the word “religious tolerance,” because what you tolerate is what you’re enduring, and one day, your strength will fail, and something will snap in you, and you will stop being tolerant. Jesus didn’t tolerate unbelievers, He loved and embraced them.

I am not tolerating my elder brothers. I love them, knowing fully well that both of them, together with their wives, my nephews and niece, may never convert to Christianity.

I also understand that I am not better than my friends and family who are not in my religion. I was born to a Christian mother, and she raised me to understand and love Christianity. I grew up accepting Christianity as the only way. Although I disagreed with her when I turned 20 and stopped practicing Christianity the way she introduced it to me, we’ve gone to different churches since then.

My eldest brother’s Muslim faith traces back to his own mother, who was also Muslim. My immediate elder brother, on the other hand, was sent to live with our uncle, Late Chief Adediji Okùnadé, who was the Àràbà of Surulere, Lagos, until his death, from a very tender age, and it was there, under our uncle, that he was introduced to Ìṣẹ̀ṣe.

So you can see what shaped the path each of the three of us took, we were each raised, in different homes and by different hands, to practice the religion we currently practice.

Our Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ ancestors came to Jos with that same mindset. They lived in the same compound, each practicing his own religion peacefully, so when the Christians secured land for a church on Adebayo Street, they understood their brothers needed land for a mosque too, and they accommodated them.

Take a moment to imagine a church and a mosque, side by side, holding services simultaneously with loudspeakers on, for over a century.

That is not tolerance. That is love. That is forbearance. You can’t keep “tolerating” something for generations, all the founding members are long dead, yet they set a standard of love for the generations that came after.

“A Road From Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ to Jos” will be screening on Thursday, 10th September, 2026, at the Olúṣeun Onígbìndé Resource Centre, Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́, by 10am and 4pm, and at Mee’s Palace Cinema, Rayfield, Jos, by 12pm.