World’s largest church inaugurated in Lagos

After about 25 years of construction
work, the multimillion Naira
National Temple of The Apostolic
Church Nigeria, TAC, touted as the
largest church in the world, has
been inaugurated in Lagos. Sited at
the international ground of the
Church in Ketu, the newly dedicated
temple has a sitting capacity of

100,000 worshippers at a time.
The national president of The
Apostolic Church, TAC, and the
chairman of LAWNA, Pastor Gabriel
Olutola thanked God who enabled
them to complete the temple. He
described the temple as “The House
built with prayer,” stressing that it is
a symbol of the church’s unification.
Olutola also used the occasion of the
dedication to appreciate the sterling
qualities of the pioneer LAWNA
chairman, late Pastor Samuel
Adegboyega who laid the foundation
25 years ago. He lauded the efforts
of the building committee, the
national executive council of TAC
and all the church members for
their financial and spiritual support.
The National President of the
Christian Association of Nigeria,
CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritstejafor who
dedicated the temple second door,
also appreciated God for the success
of the project
The new church building
In a sermon tagged; “The House of
God”, the Cameroon president of
TAC, Pastor Paul Tambe stated that
if saints humble and pray God will
answer their prayers and heal their
land.
Earlier in an interview, the LAWNA
president traced the genesis of the
imposing cathedral to August 4, 1957
when Pastor Isaiah Sakpo received a
prophecy about the building of a
national temple for the church. The
foundation laying ceremony for the
project took place during his
leadership of LAWNA.
However, after the foundation was
laid by his predecessor on May 10,
1986, it had almost become a
reproach to the church because of
the ugly sight it created in such a
prominent area of Lagos. When
Pastor Samuel Jemigbon came on
board, he decided to take this
reproach away.
He created a separate department
for the national temple project with
qualified accountants and other
experienced professionals to
supervise the work.
According to Olutola: “We have
being on this project and at a point
we met a contractor who promised
to complete the work for us for
N14.3 million. We gave him an
advance of N5 million but he did not
do one quarter of the job before he
started demanding for another N5
million which is a clear indication
that N40 million would not finish
the job. We spent almost N27
million on the painting alone.
Olutola who could not tell the exact
cost of completing the edifice,
however, told our reporters that the
floor tiles alone gulped about N143
million.
“I will need the assistance of the
accountants who would do a lot of
mathematics for us to get the whole
amount because by the time we
wanted to paint, we discovered that
there were some errors with the
pillars and the walls. And we have
to engage another contractor who
came to perfect the job and what we
thought would cost us between
300,000 and 600,000, cost us N2.3
million.
“There were other minor jobs like
that which made us to spend much
more than we originally budgeted
for. We had to lay cables for our
public address systems separately,
lighting and video,” he stated.