An unending story of the Basilica in Yamoussoukro

The significance of this town to the political and historical evolution of the country is still evolving. In size, Yakro is perhaps not a big town with 300,000 inhabitants according to the tour guide. The town is largely surrounded by groves of coconut palms and it is from this that Felix Houphouet Boigny reclaimed 150 […]

The significance of this town to the political and historical evolution of the country is still evolving. In size, Yakro is perhaps not a big town with 300,000 inhabitants according to the tour guide. The town is largely surrounded by groves of coconut palms and it is from this that Felix Houphouet Boigny reclaimed 150 hectares of land to build the Basilique de Notre Dame de la Paix. A lot has been written about the Basilica, but its sheer opulence and size is mind-boggling.

Boigny, its progenitor, built it to satisfy his heart’s desire. Having visited other Basilicas in the world, he chose a model that would not only encompass them all, but would have all the traits of the others incorporated in it. To translate his dream into reality, he chose Pierre Facoury, a Lebanese born in Cote d’Ivoire, to midwife his dream. From conception to the realisation, Facoury worked with Boigny to deliver his dream in stages. The building cost a fortune of Ivoirian foreign exchange as most of the materials were shipped in from France, Spain and Rome. According to our tour guide, work started on the project in 1986 and took three solid years of intensive work. Thirty six companies were involved in its construction and the adjoining garden takes thirty-six hectares of the entire land.

The Basilica seats 18,000 people at a time. Its wooden seats were imported from Italy and Bordeaux. The air-conditioning system is in the attic and cools the gigantic edifice from orifices in front of the seats. It has 12 giant pillars assembled on site but imported from abroad. There are four giant lifts moving tourists to the top of the basilica and six stairwells. The central cross is said to weight 50,000 kilograms and the marble imported from Spain and Italy covers a seven hectare space.

There are twelve colourful windows after the twelve apostles of Christ and the light projectiles use up 1,000 watt electric bulbs. On each of the windows are artistic inscriptions showing the various passions of Jesus and like everything Ivoirian, Boigny etches his own sketch of the Lord’s Super on one of the windows. On this particular one can be seen an impression of Boigny genuflecting before a superimposed drawing of Christ making the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the donkey prior to his trial and crucifixion. Behind Boigny is a female artist said to have ingeniously carved the drawings and a balding priest. In front of the donkey is Facoury himself and a few of the officials who were involved in the erection of this gargantuan monument.

Mass is held in this basilica from time to time, but perhaps nothing close to the gathering that witnessed its commissioning shortly before the death of its founder. Nothing is said about the cost of the basilica to a country where poverty is almost crippling. The tour guide explains that death is never mentioned within the precincts of the basilica in a gesture perhaps at forcefully immortalising Boigny whose credentials as a Christian is questioned by those who accuse him of evolving a system of political elimination of opponents, grand corruption and despotism.

The inhabitants of Yakro express shock at seeing a black man making a trip to the Basilica. They told me, “we don’t go there,” in response to my earlier enquiry on how to get there from the Gare UTB where my bus dropped me and other passengers. A woro-woro (taxis that take more than one passenger) agreed to take me there after charging me 400CFA, four times the drop rate, but I had no choice than to board. Nobody enters the basilica for free, I was told at the gates. “Even Laurent Gbagbo pays whenever he comes”, the guard quipped as he showed me the rates ranging from 500CFA for students and 2500CFA for non-Ivoirians. I had protested that as an African, I should not be classed among ‘foreigners’ anywhere in Africa.

The basilica is completed and commissioned, but building on its 150 hectare land is not finished yet. On one flank is a signpost showing the construction of the L’hopital Catholique Saint Joseph-Moscati, one of two other projects envisaged on the site. The others are a Catholic University perhaps modelled after a similar one in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium and the last structure to be erected here would be an office for the Vatican Radio, the Vatican’s own global media conglomerate. All these, our guide informs us with a mixture of pride and a tinge of shame have been paid for by Boigny before his passage.

For a country with an almost equal proportion of Christians and Muslims, the Basilica is a stamp of Christianity on a nation proud of its secularity. But Boigny is not a religious bigot. He found the cash to build a silver-lined Mosque in the middle of town. Both projects overlook each other by a long span separated by an artificial lake. But when it comes to visiting, it is certain that more people cared to visit the Basilica in its opulence than the mosque.

Yakro, Boigny’s adopted town is home to his remains. But above that, he has also conceptualised a new federal capital here and construction work on the new Presidential Villa is advancing according to plan. If Yamoussoukro makes it eventually as the Abuja of Abidjan, it would need to expand the narrow road network from Abidjan to the new capital and perhaps modernise the check-points or perhaps create a new haven for the trailers ferrying goods and the trucks carrying heavy logs of wood on this route. They frequently break down on the road thereby endangering other motorists and cost an unquantifiable wear and tear on it. This is envisaged, after all, this is the same road that takes travellers as far away as Bamako in Mali.

But how much did it cost to build the Basilica? Well, the answer as they say is blowing in the winds with some saying it cost anywhere in the neighbourhood of a billion CFA. From a Christian perspective, these buildings are temporal in nature. Christ’s promise is that not one stone shall be left standing upon another at the end of the world, but then, do we ever remember an end when we’re having fun?