Stop Highway Vehicle Check On Sundays

I have observed over time in Rivers State, Port Harcourt metropolis to be precise, that police and road safety marshalls mount their routine vehicle check earlier than usual on Sunday mornings. This is not bad at all. At least, it makes room for more vehicles to be captured before the day’s work closes.
However, while we commend the road marshalls for making it early to duty even on a day that official duties are not usually taken very seriously, and while we acknowledge the multi-religous status of our country and, by extension, our own state, we cannot rule out the fact that Rivers State is dominantly a Christian state.
Therefore, as a state dominated by Christian worshippers, what that suggests is that many people go to church to worship on Sunday mornings. Worship, we all know, begins with the breaking of the day. While many worshippers attend early morning “Mass’, some others leave their houses early to avoid lateness to their worship centers that may be far from their places of abode.
The activities of the road marshalls on Sunday mornings, in the course of discharging their official duty, in no small measure conflicts with the interest of the majority of road users on such day, as well as contradicts the demands of the day, especially within the morning period.
The result is that many worshippers, in subjection to official demands to release their vehicles for check, end up either arriving late to church or miss the service session entirely. I have been privileged to be in Islamic states in this country, I discovered that worshippers end route their respective jumaat centers on Fridays, move drive in their cars uninterrupted.
If at all any check is necessary on Fridays, it is usually kept on hold until the end of the day’s jumaat service when secular activities must have resumed. In the same spirit, I would want to crave the indulgence of the state authority to consider the need to officially respect this day, by pending every check on vehicles plying the roads on Sundays till when justice must have been done to the day’s worship.
Kelvin Chinagorom,
Port Harcourt.