STANDS OF NUISANCE

b_1000665_100_061_05_p_cv4_412STANDS OF NUISANCE

It was sunny that Sunday I decided to read my text on Law of Tort. Before then, I had made up my mind to read the topic on nuisance which had been eyeing since last semester. So, I descended on the topic in one of the cozy reading rooms my hall of residence boasts of. I was reading the categories of private nuisance when I came upon the statement that private nuisance is actionable if there is substantial interference with the plaintiff’s use and enjoyment of land, with the example of the plaintiff being subjected to unreasonable noise or smell emanating from the defendant’s neighbouring land. I wanted to continue my reading but I realised the following sentence was not sinking. I just couldn’t understand what the string of words was trying to draw. I thought maybe the recent break had made me become rusty in reading. But it dawned on me that I was having intermittent bouts of distraction which was hindering my concentration. Distracted by what? By the noise! The nuisance nauseating my brain to grasp what I was reading was coming from the cluster of churches beside my hall of residence. Just as the praise and worship of a church was booming, I could hear the piercing voice of a preacher while trying to block away drumming from another church.

A hall of residence is meant to be domiciliary, enjoyable and free from any annoyance or discomfort. Since I have a #14,000 stake in my hall, I have every right to enjoy it as much as my money lasts, not frustrated by some churches which think their religious zeal is best showcased beside a hall of residence housing students who have to study.

I made my investigation into the situation and it was gathered that the vast land whereon these churches was architectured to be the car park of the hall only for it to hijacked by them. Apparently, the hall management thinks it blasphemous to right this holy wrong as it watches on indifferently. Annoyingly interesting is that most of these churches are patches of metals and tarpaulin unbefitting of the House of the Lord.

I have realised that my hall is not the only host of these misplaced worship centers, they dot virtually every hall. While it cannot be confirmed if they contribute to the revenue of the halls they dot, it is unscrupulous for any residence’s management to permit such inappropriateness due to monetary gain.

Churches are not the only culprits of erecting inappropriate structures in inappropriate places. Mosques abound in residential areas too. Some even erect theirs right inside their compounds without minding their neighbours. They disturb your sleep in the early hours of the morning and their sermons annoyingly penetrate your ears in sunny noons.

It is quite unfortunate that the proliferation of religious centres has not led to proliferation of sound attitudes and godly morals. If anything, they deplete day by day and this can be explained by the fact that many of these religious centers are founded with financial motives and not to win souls for the Lord. This has resulted in the unabashed manner with which someone just wake up one day and says he wants to ‘establish’ his own church because ‘God’ or rather ‘money’ has called him. Then, he joins some metal and wood, patches them with nylon, covers it with tarpaulin and calls it the House of God. How blasphemous!

Further compounding the irony in our higher institutions of learning are the supposed intellectuals who attend these misplaced churches. Those who ought to initiate a system to denounce the nuisance constituted by these churches make up the gleeful congregation. The initiators are the perpetrators. How pathetic!

But they cannot be blamed. They don’t want to be accursed by any of these churches if they dare initiate such system. That is the extent to which we have become servile to religion at the expense of rational thoughts. The nuisance constituted by these misplaced religious centres is treated as a necessary evil. Everyone is afraid to speak against it. Even, none of the contemporary textbooks I have read so far on nuisance mentions misplaced worship centres as a source of interference to enjoyment of land. Religion is such a sensitive issue and it has lessened our resolve to reason realistically and logically. It is not unlikely that many are already viewing this write-up as sinful just because it calls into question the nuisance constituted by some worship centers.

Apparently, our government officials too are afraid to sanction them as they don’t want to be accursed. In our clime, you will hardly find a political candidate whose manifestos include eradicating these misplaced worship centres. Doing so might signal the end of his political journey. All the culpable churches will dedicate their morning services to hurling curses at his person and family. The evening services will be to launch fire on his career and in their thanksgivings, they will praise ‘God’ for the calamity that will soon befall him.

The change to the nuisance of these churches will start when we all begin to realize that we are not created to endure and be servile to some of the frustrating actions and inactions of religious institutions but to enjoy them to save our souls and facilitate our closeness to God.

God, in His infinite mercies, certainly didn’t create land for people to constitute nuisance to another, then definitely, no religious institution should be constitute nuisance

 

 

 

Estudiante

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