Along Nigeria’s ‘spiritual highway’, prayer camps create a new urban future

The highway between Lagos and Ibadan was built in 1978 at the height of Nigeria’s oil boom. Lagos is the country’s largest city, with an estimated population of over 20 million, and Ibadan the third-largest and home to a globally renowned university. But the boom years are over and rising traffic and decades of neglect have turned the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway into one of Nigeria’s deadliest motorways, earning it the nickname “highway of death”. Yet even as the 127km stretch of road has faltered…