The police have sealed off a church in Uyo where the Akwa Ibom Governor, Udom Emmanuel, worships.
Armed police officers in 10 trucks arrived Qua Iboe Church at 112 Ikot Ekpene Road early Sunday morning and barricaded the church entrance, preventing worshippers from entering the premises.
A woman with her two children who wanted to get to the church was seen stepping down from Keke (a commercial tricycle). She and her children walked back and then entered into a nearby street, apparently frightened by the presence of the police officers.
Later in the day, around 10 a.m., some members of the church began gathering by the roadside, while the police continued to mount the barricade.
The police action was due to a lingering factional crisis at the church.
A Security man in the Church, Attach, said: “The police have padlocked the main gate of the church, they don’t allow anybody to enter the church.
“The policemen came here as early as 6 a.m., and locked the gate after ordering people who were sweeping the church to leave.
“Our church is not a police station, they should not be doing this They should leave the place and go back to their station.”
Samuel Magnus, the church youth leader, said angrily on the phone while preparing to leave home for the church: “Qua Iboe Church was founded around 1887 by an Irish missionary, Samuel Bill, who served in Ibeno, in present-day Akwa Ibom State.
“The church, whose headquarters is in Akwa Ibom, derived its name from the Qua Iboe River, which flows through the state into the Atlantic Ocean.
“The 131-year-old church split into two factions in Nigeria about 17 years ago when some members who were uncomfortable with the name Qua Iboe, pushed for a change of name to United Evangelical Church.
“Some of the church’s branches across the country have embraced the new name, while others, mostly in Akwa Ibom, have stoutly rejected it because of a special affinity with the name Qua Iboe.
“Governor Emmanuel is a member and a deacon of Qua Iboe Church. He used to worship with his family in a branch of the church in Lagos before he moved down to Uyo on his appointment as the secretary to the Akwa Ibom government in 2014,” Bill concluded.