In this post we will be looking at a brief History of Christianity in Nigeria, the first missionary in Nigeria, Christianity today in Nigeria and Church of Nigeria.
INTRODUCTION.
Christians in Nigeria comprise an estimated 49.3% of the population. Christians are dominant in the southern (south-east/south-south/South west and central region) in Nigeria. According to the Pew Research Center, Nigeria has the largest Christian population of any country in Africa, with more than 80 million persons in Nigeria belonging to the church with various denominations. The majority of Christians in Nigeria is Protestant.
The Catholic Church has an increase of followers in Nigeria. In 2005, there were an estimated 19 million baptized Catholics in Nigeria. The Archdioceses of the Roman Catholic Church are Abuja, Benin City, Calabar, Ibadan, Jos, Kaduna, Lagos, Onitsha, Owerri, and Sokoto.
Cardinal Francis Arinze is a Roman Catholic Cardinal from Nigeria. The ecclesiastical provinces of the Church of Nigeria are Lagos, Ibadan, Ondo, Edo, The Niger, Niger Delta, Owerri, Abuja, Kaduna, and Jos. Its primate is Nicholas Dikeriehi Orogodo Okoh. The Church of Nigeria claims about 18 million members with an estimated 2 million members being active.
The National Church of Nigeria (previously known as the Nigerian Ecumenical Centre and officially known as the National Christian Centre) is a non-denominational church building of the Christian Association of Nigeria, the umbrella body of many of Nigeria’s Christian denominations. The church is located in Abuja.
HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN NIGERIA
Spasmodic missionary activities started in Benin in 1515 when some Catholic missionaries set up a school in the Oba’s palace for his sons and the sons of his chiefs who were converted to Christianity. The Catholics, through the influence of the Portuguese traders, were the first missionaries to set foot on Nigerian soil. The primary objective of the early Christian missionaries was to convert the ‘heathen’ or the benighted African to Christianity via education. The second missionary endeavor to Nigeria was marked by the advent of the first English-speaking Christian mission in Badagry in September 1842.
The Christian missionary school in Nigeria was without any doubt an adjunct of the Church. It was a replica of a similar development in Britain during the Dark Ages. The missionaries were generally strong disciplinarians and they had abiding faith in manual labour and the rod as the cure to all ills—idleness, laziness, slow learning, truancy, disobedience, and irregularity of attendance. In the 17th century, the Roman Catholic missionaries found their way to Nigeria. They came into cities like Benin and Warri where they preached Christianity. But they were unable to convert the kings and traditional rulers as these leaders were only interested in the guns and mirrors the Europeans offered them.
Eventually, slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1833 and many of the slaves were freed. Many years later, some of these slaves returned to Nigeria with the religion they had learned from their Europeans masters. The education provided by the missionaries was also instrumental in converting a good number of slaves to Christianity. One of the slaves that was instrumental to the advent of Christianity in Nigeria was Samuel Ajayi Crowther who was captured by the age of 12 by Fulani slave raiders and sold to Portuguese slave traders. Ajayi Crowther later regained his freedom and became the first African to be ordained bishop by the Christian Missionary Society (CMS). Additionally, Crowther was a pioneer of local Christian missionary work in the country and he was pivotal in the translation of the Bible into Yoruba language. Over the years, Christianity has grown rapidly.
In 1953, the percentage of the Christian population was 21.4% and that percentage has doubled to over 50% with over 75 million Christians in Nigeria. Currently, the Southern part of the country is dominated by Christians while the Northern part is composed of predominantly Muslims. Recent estimates put the percentage of Nigeria’s population that practice Christianity between 40% – 49.3%. Of that percentage, about 74% are Protestants, 25% Roman Catholic, while the rest are split among other Christian denominations.
THE FIRST MISSIONARY IN NIGERIA
In the days of Portuguese contacts with Nigeria, Catholic priests had established missionary stations in Benin and the neighborhood. But despite the work of Portuguese missionaries based on the island of Sao Tome and later of Spanish missionaries in Benin, it was not until the nineteenth century that the Christian religion was firmly established in Nigeria. It started first among the Yoruba receptive who had embraced the Christian faith while in Sierra Leone (freed from slave trading ships by the British Royal Naval Squadron), and who returned home between 1839 and 1845.
The pastors of the Church Missionary Society, from Badagry and later from Sierra Leone, visited these Christian communities in Abeokuta and other towns. Among the first missionaries was the Rev. Henry Townsend who went from Sierra Leone to Badagry in 1842 in his company was the Rev Ajayi Crowther. Success followed the efforts of the pioneer missionaries. C.M.S. churches were firmly established in several important towns, such as Abeokuta (1846), Lagos (1851), Ibadan (1853), and Oyo (1856). Next, branches of the C.M.S. church were founded in south-eastern Nigeria, the chief centers being Bonny and Brass.
The effects of work done by Bishop Ajayi Crowther, assisted by the Igbo receptive the Rev. J. C. Taylor, in these parts of southern Nigeria can still be seen today. Other missionaries opened mission stations in the country. These included the Baptist missionaries who under the American evangelist, Thomas Bowen, started work from Ogbomosho in 1855. About the same time, the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) headed by the Rev. Hope Waddell started pioneering work, in 1846, in Calabar.
Hope Waddell was later joined by the Rev. Hugh Goldie and William Anderson. Another missionary whose memory is revered in Nigeria was Mary Slessor, she arrived in the country in 1876, and for many years worked assiduously as a missionary nurse. She succeeded in stopping the killing of twins in the areas where she served.
The story of the planting of Christianity in Nigeria would be incomplete without a mention of the Italian Roman Catholic priest, Father Berghero. Operating from Whydah in what is today the People’s Republic of Benin (formerly Dahomey), Father Berghero, in 1860, visited Abeokuta and Lagos where freed Catholic slaves from Brazil welcomed him warmly.
A permanent station was established in Lagos in 1868, soon followed by others at Lokoja, Abeokuta and Ibadan. Within ten years of Father Berghero’s visit, the Roman Catholic Church in Nigeria had become so well established that it ceased to be under administration from Dahomey. By 1885, the church had spread further inland, thanks to Father Joseph Lutz who started work around Onitsha in 1886 and spread the gospel in many parts of the present-day Imo and Anambra States.
Another important Catholic missionary in this area was the Irishman, Bishop Shanahan. Although Lokoja had a small C.M.S. station in 1858, it was not until 1889 that the missionaries entered Hausa land, which was predominantly Muslim. Their converts, for many years, were confined to the people of southern Nigerian extraction resident in the north, and to the-large non-Muslim population of the north.
CHRISTIANITY TODAY IN NIGERIA
When it comes to Christianity in recent times, the tides seem to have changed has the country has begun to export its Christianity to other parts of the world. This is having been partly due to a new type of churches called the mega churches. Mega churches seem to have arrived with the advent of Pentecostalism which can be traced to the early 20th century in America. The mega church syndrome can be traced to 1910 when a local charismatic movement led by an Anglican deacon split from the Anglican church to become the Christ Army Church.
There was a revival in this new church and as a result, the church grew in size forming independent churches. These churches were characterized by fervent prayer styles, known by the Yoruba word Aladura (praying people). Some of the early Aladura churches include the Eternal Sacred Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim Society, founded in 1925, and the Church of the Lord (Aladura), founded in 1930.
One of the most popular preachers during this period was Joseph Babalola of Faith Tabernacle. The preacher led a revival in the 1930s that converted thousands of locals. In 1932, his church was initially associated with the Pentecostal Apostolic Church of Great Britain but later broke away to form an independent church, the Christ Apostolic Church.
Over the next two decades, foreign Pentecostal churches began to plant branches in Nigeria. It was during this period the Welsh Apostolic Church was established in 1931 and Assemblies of God in 1939. Also, the Foursquare Gospel Church was also introduced in Nigeria at the same time. Some local Pentecostal churches also sprung up; these include the Celestial Church of Christ which arrived in western Nigeria from Benin to become one of Africa’s largest Aladura churches.
CHURCH OF NIGERIA.
Christianity came to Nigeria in the 15th century through Augustinian and Capuchin monks from Portugal. The first mission of the Church of England was, though, only established in 1842 in Badagry by Henry Townsend. In 1864 Samuel Ajayi Crowther, an ethnic Yoruba and former slave, was elected Bishop of the Niger and the first black Bishop of the Anglican Communion. Lagos became a diocese of its own in 1919.
Leslie Gordon Vining became Bishop of Lagos in 1940 and in 1951 the first archbishop of the newly inaugurated Province of West Africa. Vining was the last Bishop of Lagos of European descent. On 24 February 1979, the sixteen dioceses of Nigeria were joined in the Church of Nigeria, a newly founded province of the Anglican Communion, with Timothy O. Olufosoye, then Bishop of Ibadan, becoming its first archbishop, primate and metropolitan. Between 1980 and 1988, eight additional dioceses were created.
In 1986, he was succeeded by J. Abiodun Adetiloye who became the second primate and metropolitan of Nigeria, a position he would hold until 1999. In 1989 the Diocese of Abuja was created on the area of the new capital of Nigeria with Peter Akinola as first bishop. The 1990s was the decade of evangelization for the Church of Nigeria, starting with the consecration of mission bishops for the mission dioceses of Minna, Kafanchan, Katsina, Sokoto, Makurdi, Yola, Maiduguri, Bauchi, Egbado and Ife. Between 1993 and 1996 the primate founded nine dioceses; Oke-Osun, Sabongidda-Ora, Okigwe North, Okigwe South, Ikale-Ilaje, Kabba, Nnewi, Egbu and Niger Delta North.
In December 1996 five more mission dioceses were added in the north — Kebbi, Dutse, Damaturu, Jalingo and Oturkbo — and their respective first bishops elected.[8] In 1997 and 1998 four more dioceses were established; Wusasa, Abakaliki, Ughelli and Ibadan North. In 1999 the Church of Nigeria added 13 new dioceses; four in July (Oji River, Ideato, Ibadan South and Offa), eight in November (Lagos West, Ekiti West, Gusau, Gombe, Niger Delta West, Gwagwalada, Lafia and Bida) and Oleh in December. So, within 10 years there were 27 new regular dioceses and 15 mission dioceses created.
The Archbishop of Canterbury declared the Church of Nigeria to be the fastest growing church in the Anglican Communion. In 1997 the Church of Nigeria was split into three ecclesiastical provinces (see below). In 2000, Archbishop Peter Akinola succeeded Archbishop Adetiloye as primate of the Church of Nigeria.
One of his first actions as primate was to get together 400 bishops, priests, lay members and members of the Mothers’ Union to elaborate a vision for the Church of Nigeria under the chairmanship of Ernest Shonekan, a former President of Nigeria.