To the beat of drums, the congregation at this Legos church are worshipping using sign language
It's a branch of the Christian Mission for the Deaf, a church for deaf and mute people in Simolu, a suburb of Nigeria's largest city
It's offering them a sense of community in a society where the perception of people with disabilities is influenced by traditional beliefs or is even seen as a divine punishment
African society believed that deafness or blindness or any disability was a curse
So they took people to churches or fetish priests looking for a miracle
But it doesn't work like that. The fact that we can communicate with our hands, sign language, is the miracle itself
It's a miracle. It's different. It started in 1956 during the colonial period the church has a teaching unit for sign language and also serves as a learning center which Akhenremi says is vital to help deaf people understand the world better
The deaf church has a great importance for us, the deaf, because with it we come to know Christ
and it also provides us with the community for people like ourselves
whereas before we were living in isolation with our families they don't know that there are other deaf people we can relate to
that is the importance of sign language and also the importance of the church
It's estimated that over 9 million of Nigeria's 232 million citizens are dead or living with
hearing impairment