For the second time in just 14 days, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held a groundbreaking ceremony for a temple in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa.
On Saturday, May 24, ground was broken for the Benin City Nigeria Temple, one of seven total houses of the Lord in the West Africa nation. Elder Adeyinka A. Ojediran, a General Authority Seventy and first counselor in the Church’s Africa West Area, presided at the groundbreaking services and offered a prayer dedicating the site and the construction process.
Two weeks earlier, on May 10, a similar groundbreaking was held for the Lagos Nigeria Temple, with Elder Alfred Kyungu, a General Authority Seventy and president of the Africa West Area, presiding.
‘Temples are sacred places’
Said Elder Ojediran at Saturday’s groundbreaking: “Temples are sacred places where we make sacred covenants with God and receive blessings for ourselves and our families, living and dead. They are houses of the Lord, places of peace and learning, where we can seek spiritual guidance for crucial decisions and concerns, and where we can receive revelations and draw closer to God.”
A temple’s principal purpose is to provide ordinances and covenants necessary for the children of God to enable them to return to dwell with Him, he added. “Temple ordinances and covenants lead to the greatest blessings available through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”
The Benin City temple groundbreaking was first reported by Africa Newsroom on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Elder Ojediran was accompanied by his wife, Sister Olufunmilayo Ojediran, as well as by Elder Isaac K. Morrison, a General Authority Seventy and second counselor in the Africa West Area presidency, and his wife, Sister Hannah Morrison. They were joined by other local leaders, members and community dignitaries at the groundbreaking services.
Turning the hearts of the children
Expressing gratitude for ancestors and the opportunity to do temple work for those who have died, Elder Ojediran prayed for the hearts of the children to be turned to their fathers and the hearts of the fathers turned to the children (see Malachi 4:6, Doctrine and Covenants 2; 110:13–16; 138; Joseph Smith—History 1:37–39).
“May we learn who they are, find their qualifying information and bless their lives with sacred rites offered vicariously in this, Thy holy house,” he prayed.
Also speaking during the Benin City temple groundbreaking were two youth — Opeyemi Folorunsho Sunday and Eunice Ebevuhe — and Frank O. Erahabor, a stake patriarch and pioneer Latter-day Saint in Benin City.
In April 2020 general conference, President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Benin City.
The Benin City Nigeria Temple is projected as a two-story building of about 30,700 square feet and will be built on a 2.17-acre site at 16 Commercial Ave., Benin City, in Edo State in southern Nigeria. Construction plans include an arrival center and patron housing.
Temples in Nigeria
In 2005, President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the Aba Nigeria Temple, the country’s first house of the Lord and the third on the African continent, after the Johannesburg South Africa and Accra Ghana temples. The Aba temple is the only dedicated house of the Lord in Nigeria, with the Lagos and Benin City temples now under construction.
Four additional temples — each announced by President Nelson in general conference settings in consecutive years from 2022 through 2025 — are in the planning and design stages for Eket, Calabar, Abuja and Uyo. The seven temples are the most in any African country, followed by the four in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and three each in Ghana and South Africa.
More than 250,000 Latter-day Saints comprising 840 congregations reside in Nigeria, where the Church of Jesus Christ was first established in 1978.
