In the Agbaje end of Agbeni Market, where Ibadan’s commerce shouts from dawn, Alhaja Kuburat Oladunmomi Owoola, from the Aleshinloye Abass dynasty of Ibadanland, has built a stillness: a mosque valued at about ₦75 million, finished in Ramadan and opened to a community that once prayed in corridors and beside stalls and shops.
She is a businesswoman who knows margins and risks; she is also a pious Muslim who knows what lasts. This gift is more than brick and marble. It is sadaqah jāriyah, a continuous charity. Every adhan called from its minaret, every child who memorises āyāt under its fans, and every customer or porter who steps in from the heat for a quick rakaʿah becomes part of her ongoing reward.
The Holy Prophet Muhammad said, “Whoever builds a mosque for Allah, Allah builds for him a house in paradise”. That hadith now lives in practical form on Agbaje, Agbeni’s congested edge: elders who bow without jostling; women with a clean entrance and a quiet room for teaching girls; and young traders who will remember Islam as beauty and order, not only hustle. A mosque is fiqh translated into architecture—seeing a need, space, dignity, water, light, and safety and meeting it without publicity. Alhaja Kuburat did not wait for headlines. She saw rows spilling into the market during Jumuʿah, heard the same complaints for years and acted.
Jazākillāhu khayran, Alhaja Owoola. The angels will record it; the city will remember it every Friday when the rows straighten and the Qur’an rises.
If barakah has a signature, it is here: practical, local and unshowy. May Allah accept it from her, wrap her in ʿāfiyah and make this masjid a window of mercy for her family and for Ibadanland. May Allah fulfill all her aspirations, Birrahmatika Yaarhamu Rahimeen.
Tunji Oladejo, mnipr, JP, writes from the University of Ibadan and is the Chairman of The Progressive Forum, Ibadan (TPFI), via oladejo65@gmail.com.
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