The Ahmadiyya Movement was founded in British India by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1836-1906), an Islamic reformist and mystic, who in 1891 claimed that he was a prophet, mujaddid (“renewer”), and the messiah/mahdi anticipated by Muslims. The movement split in two following the death of Ahmad’s successor, Maulana Nur ad-Din in 1914, with one group affirming Ahmad’s messianic status (The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam) and a second group regarding him as a reformer, but otherwise adhering to mainstream Islamic beliefs that understand Muhammad to have been the final prophet (the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement).

The Ahmadiyya movement is regarded as heterodox by the majority of mainstream Muslims, and Ahmadiyya Muslims have been marginalized, discriminated against in various ways, and sometimes violently oppressed, particularly in Pakistan, where they were categorized as a non-Muslim minority in national law through the efforts of political and religious leaders in 1974. Nonetheless, Ahmadiyya Muslims and organizations are active in educational, missionary, and community efforts worldwide. There are also exists a Sufi brotherhood called the Ahmadiyya, popular in Sudan and Egypt, which is unrelated to the Ahmadiyya Movement.

The Ahmadiyya Movement was introduced in Lagos in 1916 and became popular among young intellectuals. The movement split in the 1930s over the issue of foreign control. A Nigerian branch of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam took shape under the leadership of Alhaji Jibril Martin, a leader of the Nigerian Youth Movement. By the 1950s there were three separate sections of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Lagos. Martin was also a cofounder and chairman of the Pilgrims’ Board of Nigeria’s western region, which administered the hajj pilgrimage following independence.

The Ahmadiyya Movement began establishing centers in the north in the 1960s, which was resisted among local Muslim leaders, including Abubakar Gumi, an Islamic legal scholar and future leader of the Islamist Yan Izala movement. Gumi translated several anti-Ahmadiyya works, including those by Pakistani Islamist Abul A'la al-Mawdudi, and supported the decision of the Islamic World League condemning the Ahmadiyya as heretical. In 1973, Saudi Arabia forbade Ahmadi Muslims from acquiring hajj visas, leading to violent protests in Nigeria during which Ahmadis occupied the Saudi embassy in Lagos. In 1974, the Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs and the Jama’atu Nasril Islam adopted the League’s resolution, requiring that Muslims seeking a hajj visa acquire a written certificate from a local imam affirming that he or she was not a member of the Ahmadiyya Movement. As a result, the Ahmadiyya Movement split again, one dissenting group adopting the named Anwar al-Islam (“Rays of Islam”) and aligning itself with mainstream Sunni Islam.

Sources

Roman Loimeier, Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1997).

Richard L. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation (Princeton: Princeton University press, 1963).

The Aladura churches are independent African churches (or African Instituted Churches—AICs), that emphasize prayer and healing. Aladura is the Yoruba word for “praying people.” The Aladura churches reflect the indigenization of Christianity through its use of African symbols, traditional healing modalities, and worship styles.

Where earlier churches emphasized salvation in the hereafter, the Aladura churches offer solutions to this-world problems. Aladura churches are led by a prophet, and though they tend to maintain a strict hierarchy among clergy, laity members are not barred from joining their ranks and the laity is heavily involved. The role of the prophet echoes other roles in Yoruba society, most notably the babalawo, a Yoruba priest of Ifa (a popularity deity within the Yoruba pantheon) skilled in divination, healing, and problem-solving, though Aladura prophets are outspoken in their condemnation of indigenous deities.

The Precious Stone Society and later, the Christ Apostolic Church, are not the only Aladura churches, but their history is suggestive of some of the main themes that emerged in the early years of the Aladura movement. In 1918, an Anglican lay leader Joseph Shadare (d. 1962) in the southwest formed a prayer group with Sophia Odunlami, a schoolteacher, both of whom had experienced dreams visions calling them to respond to an influenza epidemic in the region. The Precious Stone Society was established as a spiritual support for those suffering from influenza, and emphasized prayer and a rejection of western medicine with the understanding that human susceptibility to disease represents a complex set of issues including spiritual vulnerability and others’ malevolent influence (ie. witchcraft). They broke with the Anglican Church in 1922 over the issue of medicines and of infant baptism and became affiliated with a North American fundamentalist church called the Faith Tabernacle, which also favored faith healing and adult baptism (though would later break with them over organizational and doctrinal issues).

The Aladura churches rapidly expanded throughout Yorubaland during a revival movement in the 1930s, becoming an important feature of western Nigerian society. Joseph Ayo Babalola (d. 1959), a Yoruba Anglican and public works employee, had a series of visions that brought him to the Precious Stone Society. He went on to become a general evangelist in the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC), what would become Nigeria’s largest Pentecostal Aladura church. He emphasized using “water of life,” blessed water, in healing rituals. Other important churches and prayer movements included the Cherubim and Seraphim (1925), the Church of the Lord Aladura (1953), and others.

British colonial officers, concerned by the Aladura opposition to medicine and by witch-hunting, attempted to limit the growth of the churches and arrested Babalola and other Aladura leaders. The Anglican Church in Nigeria also expressed alarm over the popularity of Aladura churches, in part because many of their own parishioners were severing ties to join the Aladura. Aladura leaders invited British Pentecostals to Nigeria, and a missionary team arrived in 1932. The African churches broke from the British Pentecostals by 1939 in response to their own use of anti-malarial medicine and their objection to the use of blessed water in healing rituals.

The Aladura movement has continued to see rapid growth since independence; the CAC is one of the largest Nigerian churches, with representation outside of Nigeria in North America, Europe, and in other African countries. A wide variety of breakaway churches have been founded throughout the century over issues such as polygamy, doctrine, and personality clashes, though all stress the importance of prayer, fasting, and the use of healing waters and oils. The Nigerian government shows a preference for the CAC because of its Christological orientation, emphasis on the Bible, educated leadership, and its educational outreach.

Historically, the Aladura churches have offered opportunities for poor and marginalized Nigerians—who played little to no role in the mission churches—to become active and leading members of their religious communities. Furthermore, they draw on indigenous symbolism, healing modalities, worship styles and spiritual roles to form a ‘contextualized Christianity’ which has made the Aladura and other Pentecostal churches appealing to a broad base of Nigerian Christians.

Scholars disagree as to whether the Aladura churches are Pentecostal, some noting broad similarities and others pointing to important differences in practices. Certainly, contemporary Pentecostalism and Aladura churches have overlapping histories. For example, the Deeper Life Bible Church—one of Nigeria’s largest Pentecostal churches—has roots in Joseph Babalola’s revival movement, and numerous founders of Pentecostal churches have Aladura backgrounds. At the same time, many Pentecostals have demonized the Aladura and other African Instituted Churches as having pagan or occult elements, downplaying the role of Christ, or having other contested features, which, considering the many wide spreading branches of the Aladura movement, are not unrealistic claims.

Sources

Allan H. Anderson, “Aladura Churches,” Religions of the World, Second Edition: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, eds. J. Gordon Melton and Martin Baumann (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010), pp. 60-61.

Allan H. Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Deji Isaac Ayegboyin, “’Heal the Sick and Cast out Demons’: The Response of the Aladura,” Studies in World Christianity, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2005), pp. 233-249.

Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Image Credits:

"Untitled," Christ Apostolic Church billboard near Ibadan, Nigeria, Jean-Baptiste Dodane, modified from Flickr Creative Commons.

Anglicanism is a Protestant Christian tradition that emerged during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. It includes the Church of England and a variety of others around the world united by shared doctrine and practice under the Anglican Communion umbrella organization. The Archbishop of Canterbury is regarded as the unofficial spiritual leader of the international Anglican community.

The Anglican Church Mission Society (CMS) members Samuel Ajayi Crowther—who would become Nigeria’s first African Anglican bishop—and Rev. J.F. Schön were part of the original British First Niger Expedition in 1841. By 1857 the CMS mission was fully engaged and a diocese was established in 1864. The CMS was by far the largest and most successful of the Christian missions in what would come to be Nigeria, in part because it granted converts the autonomy to lead their communities. As such, African clergy members were active participants in the early growth of the church. The CMS also encouraged legitimate commerce, condemning slavery in favor of agriculture, for example.

Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1806-1891), a member of the Yoruba who as a boy had been sold into slavery by Fulani Muslim raiders, escaped a Portuguese slave ship and was raised in a Church Mission Society school. He became an ordained deacon in 1843 in England, joined the Anglican mission in 1845, and later led a highly successful 1857 mission along the Niger river. In 1864 Crowther was made bishop and despite CMS policy, faced resistance from white mission personnel in his home diocese of Sierra Leone. As such, he made Lagos his headquarters and frequently participated in CMS trips throughout the Niger Delta region, among the Igbo in the Middle Belt, and among the Nupe and some Muslim Hausa in the north.

Anglican missions arrived in the north roughly at the same time as the establishment of the British Protectorate of Nigeria in 1900; as a result, Anglicanism and British colonialism were seen as one and the same by many in the north, and early missionaries to the north were poorly received. With the installation of the new Sultan of Sokoto in 1903, Sir Frederick Lugard, the first high commissioner of the protectorate, promised that the colonial administration would not interfere with religious life in the north. In effect, this limited the range of mission activity to all but the north until the 1930s. This likely benefited CMS work in other regions, which had limited resources that were then concentrated among missions in the south.

The CMS established a chain of mission schools in the early 1950s, predominantly in the south. CMS schools encouraged mother-tongue literacy, and classes were taught in the local language (unlike Catholic schools, which used English). This reflected the policy of indigenous evangelism; if students could express Christian concepts in their native language, then they could share them with others. Early mission schools focused on preparing boys to become future members of the clergy, and for girls to become housewives. In the late 19th century, British colonial educational policies were put in place that transformed the mission schools to produce civil servants in the colonial administration. The contemporary Church of Nigeria has reached out to those North American Episcopalians who are uncomfortable with recent changes in the Episcopalian Church, especially the 2003 ordination of Gene Robinson, an openly gay partnered bishop in America, and the consecration of same-sex marriages in Canada. The Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, Nicholas Okoh, has stated that the Church of Nigeria will break with the Church of England should the latter decide to permit gay clergy living in civil partnerships to serve as bishops.

Sources

Benjamin A. Kwashi, “The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion),” The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Anglican Communion, eds. Ian S. Markham et al (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 165-183.

Constance C. Nwosu and Aboidun A. Adesegun, “Protestant Missionary Education in Nigeria,” International Handbook of Protestant Education, eds. William Jeynes and David W. Robinson (New York: Springer, 2012).

Lydia Polgreen, “Nigerian Anglicans Seeing Gay Challenge to Orthodoxy,” The New York Times, December 18, 2005, accessed September 9, 2013.

Image Credits:

"Samuel Crowther: The slave boy who became bishop of the Niger (1888)," Princeton Theological Seminary Library, from Wikimedia Commons.

The Baha’i faith was founded in 19th century Iran by Mirza Hosayn-Ali Nuri Baha’ullah (d. 1892) and developed from Babism, an Iranian messianic movement, and Ithna’ashari Shi’i Shaikhism. Baha’is acknowledge numerous prophets, including Muhammad, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, and most recently Baha’ullah. The Baha’i Faith is monotheistic and universalist, recognizing the truth claims of other religious traditions. Followers believe in progressive revelation, such that each age has its prophet and revelations specific to that time. Both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims consider Baha’is to be heretical, and in Iran they face sometimes severe oppression. It is an international faith, with small communities in most countries. Of the roughly one million Baha’is in Africa today, around 38,000 live in Nigeria.

A small Baha’i community existed in Nigeria as early as the 1940s, in part due to the efforts of the New History Society and Caravan of East and West, which were founded by an American-Iranian Baha’i named Ahmad Sohrab who had broken away from the mainstream Baha’i faith. A number of study circles existed outside of Sohrab’s organizations, one of which was initiated by a Nigerian corporal who had converted in the course of corresponding with a Baha’i in New York. Mainstream Baha’i faith “pioneers”—Americans, British, Persians, and Africans proselytizing in neighboring nations—arrived in the 1950s across West Africa.

As the Baha’is did not organize themselves into churches, the missionary presence was mainly felt through voluntary associations. The Baha’i faith tended to attract unemployed, urban, Christian men, as well as foreign workers residing in West Africa. The most prominent of the African missionaries was Enoch Olinga, a Ugandan Baha’i who traveled throughout West Africa as part of the “Ten Year Crusade,” a proselytization effort initiated by Shoghi Effendi, leader of the Baha’i faith, in 1953.

Sources

Anthony Lee, The Baha’i faith in Africa: establishing a new religious movement, 1952-1962 (Boston: Brill, 2011).

Image Credits:

"Enoch Olinga," Bahá'í Media Bank, from Wikimedia Commons.

There are roughly 14 million Baptists in Nigeria, most of whom are affiliated with churches under the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC), an umbrella organization that grew out of missionary work begun in the 1850s by the American Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

American Baptist missionaries began arriving in what would come to be Nigeria in 1850, and included both white and black missionaries. White missionaries were initially deterred by work in Africa and instead focused on Asia, with racism being a considerable factor, followed by fears of malaria. As a result, early missionaries were largely former slaves and free men and women driven to share their faith with others they identified with, though white missionaries began arriving after 1850. Nonetheless, the SBC encouraged African American missionary initiative for several reasons: black missionaries were paid less, they were thought to be better at communicating with Africans, and they were physically better able to withstand malaria. However, they recommended that each mission site have a white superintendent.

Like other missions, the SBC worked through medicine and education. SBC Missionary Schools were distinguished among other missionary schools by their emphasis on educating young Nigerians to become members of an indigenous Baptist clergy. Like other missions, Baptists also believed that they held a responsibility to “civilize” Nigerians; the American Baptists accentuated American democracy and civil liberties in the curricula. However, the Baptist schools did not introduce American-style education, nor did they encourage Nigerian students to study in the United States, much to the chagrin of local Nigerians who sought opportunities to pursue an American education.

By 1950, “Africanization” of the church was well underway and Nigerian Baptists assumed prominent roles in the majority of congregations, schools, and organizations, which included leadership of the Nigerian Baptist Convention. 1950 also marked the first year that the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary began granting degrees, which helped to meet an immense need for Baptist pastors in Nigeria.

Nigerian Baptists were acutely aware of the racial dynamics in America, and in 1955 the NBC issued a statement condemning racism and identifying themselves with African Americans, communicating to American Baptists—who were certainly grappling with racism in the south—that racism hindered missionary efforts in Africa. Several Nigerian Baptists reported experiences of racist harassment by fellow Baptists during visits to the United States, and Nigerian Baptists paid close attention to news from America in the 1960s. Some churches refused to accept missionaries from American churches that practiced segregation.

Sources

Sandy D. Martin, Black Baptists and African Missions: The Origins of a Movement 1880-1915 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1989).

Michael M. Ogbeidi, “American Missionaries and Education Development,” Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ogbu U. Kalu (Lanham: University Press of America, 2005).

Allan Scott Willis, All According to God’s Plan: Southern Baptist Missions and Race, 1945-1970 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2005).

Boko Haram is a militant Islamist organization whose main target is the secular Nigerian government, although its victims are largely Muslims in Nigeria's north. Boko Haram means “Western Education is forbidden” in the Hausa language, reflecting a teaching of the early Boko Haram leader Muhammad Yusuf, who maintained that western-style education and holding government jobs are religiously forbidden under Islam. The group’s Arabic name is Ahl al Sunna li al Da’wa wa al Jihad, which can be translated as “Salafis/Sunnis for Calling People to Islam and Engaging in Jihad.”

Though Boko Haram is often assumed to have sectarian goals (such as instituting an Islamic state), it is more likely that a complex set of political, economic, and theological factors are driving this movement. In the increasingly impoverished North, high rates of unemployment and inadequate investments in education and infrastructure have led many to feel isolated, neglected, and disrespected. These and other factors, especially corruption, have spawned widespread disillusionment with the Nigerian government, which Boko Haram leaders have compared to the colonial government. They see the failure of the secular state to provide basic services to Muslims as evidence that an Islamic state would be morally and ethically superior, and point to western education as a corrupting influence (hence their name).

One of a number of young Nigerian clerics who embraced Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi/Salafi strain of Islam in the mid-1990s, Muhammad Yusuf called upon Muslims to remove the Nigerian government and replace it with an Islamic state. Officially founded in 2002 (the same year that there were riots and protests over a planned Miss World beauty pageant in the northern state of Kaduna), this indigenous northern militant group initially targeted the police and army. Starting in 2005, as reports showed growing ranks among Yusuf’s supporters and there were fears that the group was stockpiling weapons, a special operation of federal police was sent to stamp out violence and rampant crime in northeastern Borno State.

Nigerian police forces began clamping down on Boko Haram and clashes with federal soldiers in 2009 led to more than 1,000 deaths. Yusuf was killed while in police custody. Boko Haram was subsequently banned by the government, its mosques were abolished, and surviving members went underground. Since 2009, the group has stepped up their attacks to include civilian and international targets, including Christian and Muslim places of worship, schools, markets, government offices, media outlets, and a United Nations building.

Because the group has mostly been silent about its true aims, national and international speculation has ascribed motivations to it which may or may not be accurate. A 2011 secret meeting with former president Olusegun Obasanjo and a 2012 YouTube video by Yusuf’s deputy both suggested that the group’s primary motivation was still deeply rooted in the local politics of Borno State. These sources revealed a quest for revenge for the government crackdown, a desire to have its mosques rebuilt and families compensated for the losses incurred in 2009, and an outright request for government troops to be removed from Maiduguri. Others suggest that the group has become a murky confluence of elements drawn from disgruntled political factions and others with opportunist aims. Due to its cell structure, it is difficult to calculate Boko Haram’s ranks, but it is thought that it might include upwards of 4,000 militants. This estimate includes militants from Chad, Niger, and Cameroon who have crossed over Nigeria’s border.

There are varying opinions about whether and to what extent the group has established ties to other militant groups in the region and internationally. Recent NATO reports have indicated that the north African Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Somali group al-Shabaab have not only established ideological ties to Boko Haram, but have also been able to provide training and financial support. Others say that there is no proof of operational coordination with these groups

Meanwhile, public opinion is divided in Nigeria over how best to deal with the threat posed by Boko Haram. Though some support increased military action (most of whom are Christians), mainstream political and religious leaders in the North have encouraged the government to reach out to the North with solutions to the endemic poverty, unemployment, and marginalization that they believe are the heart of widespread anger among Muslims in the region.

Sources

Muhammad Sani Umar, “The Popular Discourses of Salafi Radicalism and Salafi Counter-radicalism in Nigeria: A Case Study of Boko Haram,” Journal of Religion in Africa 42 (2012): 118-144.

Joe Bavier, “Who Are Boko Haram and Why Are They Terrorizing Nigerian Christians?” The Atlantic online, January 24, 2012.

Catholicism arrived in the territory that would come to be known as Nigeria with Portuguese explorers in the 15th century, though their missionary efforts were largely unsuccessful and Catholicism virtually disappeared by the 17th century. Modern Catholic missions were established by priests from the Society of African Missions of Lyon in 1865, beginning in Lagos, and a vicariate was established in Benin in 1870. By 1920, numerous missions had appeared throughout Igboland, eventually outnumbering Anglican Church Missionary Society missions. Holy Ghost priests and priests from the St. Patrick’s Society arrived in 1932. In 1950, the first archdiocese of Kaduna, Lagos, and Onitsha were established. The world’s largest Catholic seminary is located is Bigard Memorial in Enugu in southeastern Nigeria.

Catholic schools grew increasingly popular; while Protestant mission schools taught in local languages, Catholic schools promoted English, which was regarded as a means of advancement in colonial society by the Igbo. Catholic missionaries also reached potential converts in the provision of medical care. In 1957, the Eastern Region saw the introduction of universal primary education, which was intended to secularize education and to limit the influence of private organizations, such as the Catholic Church. Catholics protested, viewing the move as evidence of discrimination against the Church and eventually exceptions were made allowing the schools to remain in operation. However, under the 1970 Public Education Edict no. 2, the East Central State assumed control over all private schools following the civil war centered in Biafra.

The Catholic Church in Nigeria became deeply involved in the civil war between the Biafran Igbo and the Nigerian Federal forces from 1967 to 1970. Triggered by a series of attacks on Igbo communities in the north and an Igbo-led failed military coup, the civil war was, for the Biafran Igbo, a holy war in which the Biafran Igbo imagined themselves as a vanguard against Islam. Over half of the Catholic missions in Nigeria were located in the eastern region, and the few Protestant missions there tended to work outside of Igbo communities. Catholic missions, including the Irish Holy Ghost Fathers and the Holy Rosary Sisters followed their Igbo congregations into Biafran territory as the Federal forces encircled them. They provided news of the immense suffering wrought by the civil war to outside media, and helped garner support for the Biafrans from the international Christian community—so much so that they were criticized for prolonging a hopeless cause by encouraging relief aid and giving hope to the Biafrans. In 1968 a Vatican mission visited Biafra, and Pope Paul VI (who had been the first European cardinal to visit Nigeria in 1962) personally spoke out on behalf of the Biafran Igbo. Missionaries who supported the Biafran Igbo were expelled following the war—roughly 500 total—and no foreign priests were permitted to work in Nigeria until the mid-1970s.

Numerous lay organizations emerged in the post-war period that supplemented the Catholic Church’s missionary efforts, its charitable work, and which increasingly gave the Church an indigenous, Africanized flavor, including the St. Anthony’s Guild, St. Jude’s Society, the Legion of Mary and the Block Rosary Crusade. Lay societies provided an important space for internal dialogue and external interface between the Church and followers of indigenous religious traditions, and through them, certain concepts and traditions were accepted within Catholicism (for example, an acceptance of the Igbo ozo rank, a politico-religious title), Catholics were taught to be welcoming towards followers of traditional religions, emphasizing forgiveness instead of intolerance, and the terms “pagan” and “idolatry” were dropped in discussions of traditional religion adherents.

In recent years the Catholic Church has seen massive growth in Nigeria, where parishioners are attracted by schools, medical services, and social services that the state has failed to provide with quality and consistency. As seminarians dwindle in North America and Europe, Nigerian and other West African priests serve parishes far from home (one in five American priests is foreign-born). At the same time, churches in North America and Europe provide outreach to Nigerian parishioners, often led by Nigerian priests. For example, the Igbo Catholic Foundation at San Francisco’s Sacred Heart Parish provides a Catholic context in which Igbo immigrants can connect with, learn about, and celebrate their culture.

Sources

“Nigeria,” World Christian Encyclopedia, eds. David B. Barrett et al, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 549-555.

Adam Nossiter, “Church Helps Fills a Void in Africa,” The New York Times, February 23, 2013, accessed September 6, 2013

Jacinta Chiamaka Nwaka, “The Catholic Church, The Nigerian Civil war, and the Beginning of Organized Lay Apostolate Groups Among the Igbos of Southeastern Nigeria,” Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 99, No. 1 (2013), pp. 78-95.

Jacob Olupona, “Globalization and African Immigrant Religious Communities,” Religion and Global Culture: New Terrain in the Study of Religion and the Work of Charles H. Long, ed. Jennifer I. M. Reid (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003), pp. 83-96.

Bengt Sundkler and Christopher Steed, A History of the Church in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Ken Waters, “Influencing the Message: The Role of Catholic Missionaries in Media Coverage of the Nigerian Civil War,” The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 4 (2004), pp. 697-718.

Paul Yancho, “Catholic Humanitarian Aid and the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War,” Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ogbu U. Kalu, eds. Chima Jacob Korieh and G. Ugo Iwokeji (Lanham: University Press of America, 2005).

Image Credits

"Catholic Church, Abuja," Jeremy Weate, from Flickr Creative Commons.

The majority of Nigeria’s approximately 70 million Christians are either Roman Catholic (at least 18.9 million) or Anglican (18 million), but a diverse group of Protestant churches also claim significant members, including Baptists (the Nigerian Baptist Convention claims 6 million worshipping members), Presbyterians, Assemblies of God, Methodists, the Evangelical Reformed Church of Christ, and what are known as the Aladura churches (Pentecostal and Spiritualist independent churches which emerged out of the Anglican Church during colonialism).

Roman Catholics and Methodists are predominant in southeasterly Igboland, while Anglicans and other Protestants (including Aladura Christians) have maintained a strong influence over Yorubaland in the southwest. The most dramatic growth within Nigerian Christianity in recent decades has been among those who identify as Evangelical or Pentecostal (either as members of newer movements or denominations, or charismatic versions of Roman Catholicism or Protestantism).

A Pew Forum survey in 2006 showed that roughly six in ten Protestants in Nigeria and three in ten Catholics were charismatic or Pentecostal. Though numbers are hard to estimate in these largely decentralized movements, the Evangelical Church Winning All claims 5 million members (mostly in the central region, but also in the north), and several large megachurches dot Nigeria’s landscape (perhaps the best known is Winners’ Chapel in greater Lagos, whose Faith Tabernacle seats more than 50,000 people). There has also been a steady population of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a small but growing population identified with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon).

Sources

"Overview: Pentecostalism in Africa," Pew Research Center, October 5, 2006, accessed March 12, 2014.

The Hausa-Fulani are an ethnic designation that includes the Hausa and the Fulani, ethnic groups that are spread throughout West Africa with smaller populations in other African regions. The combined Hausa-Fulani category refers to Hausa and Fulani living in northern Nigeria. The Hausa-Fulani make up 29% of Nigeria’s total population.

In the context of Nigeria, the groups are frequently combined as a reflection of their intertwined histories beginning in the 19^th century, when the Fulani Muslim scholar and leader Usman Dan Fodio launched a jihad which assumed control over Hausa city-states and established the Sokoto Caliphate. However, Hausa remained the language of administration and, alongside Arabic, of scholarship and literature. Intermarriage between the Hausa and Fulani was frequent.

With the onset of British colonialism, the Hausa-Fulani identity deepened in contradistinction to southern Nigerian ethnic identities. Following Nigerian independence, this intensified as regional cultural and religious identities acted as prominent mobilizing forces used by politicians advocating for greater regional representation in the central government. Ahmadu Bello’s “One North, One Islam” policy, intended to unify northern Muslims, also resulted in smaller tribes’ and communities’ decision to identify with Hausa-Fulani, often by assuming Hausa as the predominant language of the village. As such, depending on the context, Hausa-Fulani is an ethnic, a religious, a cultural, and/or a linguistic marker.

It is important to note that there are communities outside of northern Nigeria that ascribe solely to either Hausa or Fulani identities, most which practice traditional religions. This indicates that Islam has been—and continues to be—the primary centrifugal force that brings together the Hausa-Fulani identity.

Sources

CIA World Factbook, “Nigeria,” CIA World Factbook, last updated August 22, 2013, accessed September 9, 2013.

E.C. Ejiogu, The Roots of Political Instability in Nigeria: Political Evolution and Development in the Niger Basin (Burlington: Ashgate, 2011).

Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1976).

Image Credits:

"Four Hausa Gun Carriers of the South Nigerian Regiment by Sir (John) Benjamin Stone," Sir Benjamin Stone (d. 1914), National Portrait Gallery, from Wikimedia Commons.

Indigenes are people who can trace their roots back to the community who originally settled in a given location. Anyone who cannot do so is considered a non-indigene, a settler or an “allogene.” The concept took root in the 1979 Nigerian Constitution, and although not expressly supported in the 1999 constitution, it has continued to be a factor in state and national policy.

The principle behind the concept of “indigenity” was to guarantee ethnic parity in education and employment opportunities and to preserve traditional ways of life for Nigeria’s numerous minority groups. But given increasing levels of poverty and unemployment, it has turned into a powerful means of exclusion, denying non-indigenes access to already limited resources and opportunities, notably in terms of education, land ownership, participation in political affairs, and employment by the state. Taken as a whole, these discriminatory policies and practices effectively relegate many “settlers” to the status of second-class citizens, a disadvantage they can only escape by moving back to their region of origin. However, an increasing number of Nigerians have no real ties to the regions they are said to originate from, or their families may have occupied their land for a century or more and no longer know where their ancestors migrated from, and yet they face serious economic consequences because of their status.

Because there are increasingly scarce opportunities to secure government jobs, higher education and political patronage, and many Nigerians sense themselves locked in competition for a basic level of economic security, these policies have served to exacerbate intercommunal tensions. Many Nigerians believe that the rigidly-drawn indigene/settler distinction is fomenting violence between ethnic and religious groups, because it reinforces and is reinforced by other identity-based divides in Nigeria (around ethnicity, language, religion, and culture). Moreover, it erodes the meaning and importance of national citizenship, and prevents unification around other shared political and economic realities.

One prime example of this is the recurring eruptions of violence that have occurred in Jos and Plateau State. Though often presented as “Muslim-Christian” violence, in fact the conflict stems from competition for land between semi-nomadic, cattle herders (who happen to be mostly Muslim) and farmers (who happen to be mostly Christian). Though Jos was settled in 1915 during the colonial era, certain minorities have been granted the status of “true indigenes” (such as the Afizere, Anaguta, and Birom), while others have been labeled “settlers” (such as some Hausa and Jarawa communities), even though many of them have called this region home for over 150 years and cannot claim indigene status anywhere else in Nigeria. These “settlers” have resisted the label and the pervasive discrimination that comes with it.

Sources

Aaron Sayne, “Rethinking Nigeria’s Indigene-Settler Conflicts,” United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 311 (July 2012): 1-15.

“They Do Not Own This Place”: Government Discrimination Against “Non-Indigenes” in Nigeria, Human Rights Watch, Vol. 18, No. 3(A) (April 2006).

Peter Cunliffe-Jones, “Violence in Nigeria: Food not Faith,” The Guardian, 8 March 2010.

A diverse range of indigenous polities existed in the region before British colonialism, including several large and developed states in the north (including the Hausa state of Kano, Katsina, Zaria, and Gobir; the Kanem-Borno Empire; and the Jukun states of Kwararafa, Kona, Pinduga, and Wukara). Some 200 ethno-linguistic groups were found in the Middle Belt, which held roughly one-third of the population of northern Nigeria at the time of independence (covering the provinces of Adamawa, Benue, Plateau, Niger, Ilorin, Kabba, and the south of Zaria and Bauchi).

The south was also composed of several cultural zones, some of which lived in essentially stateless conditions (as did many in the Middle Belt), and others with more organized governance. In this region were the Yoruba states of Ife and Oyo, the Edo state of Benin, the Itsekiri state of Warri, the Efik state of Calabar, and the Ijo (Ijaw) city-states of Nembe, Elem Kalabari, Bonny and Okrika. Speakers of Yoruba populate the southwestern part of Nigeria, but the emergence of a distinct Yoruba ethnicity is a relatively recent phenomenon; before the 19^th century, they referred to themselves by their distinct identities, such as Oyo, Ekiti, Ondo, Ijesha, Ijebu, Igbomina, Egba, Egbabo, Yaba, and Bunu. Igboland covered 41,000 square kilometers and was 17% of Nigeria’s population at the time of independence.

The Aro (an Igbo clan of mixed Igbo and Ibibio origins) had built a complex network of alliances and treaties throughout Igboland, and their famous oracle was regarded as a court of appeal for disputes. Because they were allowed to travel with their goods without fear of attack, they became one of the two polities most responsible for the export of slaves, along with the Oyo. The Oyo experienced a series of power struggles and constitutional crises in the 18^th century that are directly related to its position during the slave trade, leading to their collapse by the 1820s. During the 19^th century, a number of Yoruba city-states waged internecine wars for control of the Atlantic slave trade.

Nigeria’s ancient indigenous traditions continue to adapt and survive, though they also continue to be challenged by religious and political forces that seek to diminish their power. There are countless of these traditions in Nigeria, but the number of practitioners is difficult to determine, and is probably underestimated because religious identity numbers do not account for the many Nigerians who claim multiple religious identities.

The theology of these religious systems include an emphasis on ancestor worship and a veneration of primordial spirits, the supernatural entities that inhabit a particular locale and are embodied in its geographical and natural features. Each of these religions has its own complex teachings of morality, and intricate traditions of healing and divination.

These traditions tend to resist the categories and concepts of Western religions (for example, many have elements of monotheism and of polytheism, with a supreme deity or creator God, such as Osanobua, Chineke, or Olodumare, and also a multitude of other deities, orisa in the Yoruba language). These traditions remain particularly strong in southwestern Yorubaland, where the city of Ile-Ife has long served as a sacred center for religious experience, including festivals, rituals, artistic expressions, and healing ceremonies.

Image Credits:

"Egungun masquerade dance garment," The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, from Wikimedia Commons.

Nigeria’s Muslim population continues to grow. Estimates suggest 80-85 million Nigerians identify as Muslim (roughly 50% of the total population), of which the majority are probably Sunni (60 million), though this is not a unified identity and includes a wide variety of different viewpoints. For example, members of Sufi orders, members of the Jama‘atul Izalatul Bid’ah Wa’ikhamatul Sunnah (or Izala) movement, and members of Boko Haram might all identify as Sunni, but the Izala and Boko Haram movements have had strong anti-Sufi components. Estimates suggest 4-10 million Nigerians are Shi’a, mostly based in Sokoto, and there is also a significant Lebanese Shi’a diaspora. In Nigeria, the most prominent Sufi orders are the Tijaniyya and Qadiriyya, and a 2012 Pew Research Center survey showed 37% of Nigerians identify with Sufi orders (19% identified specifically as Tijaniyya and 9% as Qadiriyya).

Islam arrived in Nigeria in the 11^th and 12^th centuries through trade, migration, and through the travels of the scholar-mystic-wayfarer along trade routes, through the regions of Kanem and Bornu had been in contact with Muslim traders as early as the 9^th century. As Islam spread, Muslim West Africa became deeply tied in with Islamic networks that stretched across North Africa and the Mediterranean to the Middle East, as well as an important trans-Saharan network that enabled and necessitated Arabic literacy as the lingua franca of trade.

During the 15^th century the Malian Songhay Empire spread into Northern Nigeria’s Hausaland, establishing a dynasty there under Askiyya Muhammad (d. 1538). The gold trade brought migrants from around Hausaland to flourishing central cities such as Kano, and the Hausa language became an important medium for Islamic literature and scholarship. Arabic continued to provide the groundwork for religious scholarship that facilitated exchanges between Muslims in Mali, Sudan, and beyond, formed the basis for classical Islamic education, and allowed Muslims to read foundational works of doctrine and jurisprudence. By the 18^th century, the Hausa and Fulani were well-connected to intellectual traditions and currents in Islamic thought, leading to impressive local intellectual production, from poetry to linguistics.

In the 19^th century, Usman Dan Fodio (d. 1817), founder of the Sokoto Caliphate (1804-1903), led a reformist jihad  against religious syncretism and perceived injustice throughout Hausaland and several other states, thereby expanding Islam’s influence in what would become Nigeria. Dan Fodio, his brother Abdullahi, and his son Muhammad Bello are remembered as exceptional leaders and scholars whose writings include several hundred books ranging from theology, jurisprudence, and mysticism, to literature and grammar, and spawned a scholarly movement known as the “Sokoto School.” Notably, the Sokoto School advocated women’s education, and Dan Fodio’s daughter Nana Asma’u became a prodigious scholar, educator, and writer in Arabic, Hausa, and Fulfulde. The Sultan of Sokoto, currently Muhammadu Sa'ad Abubakar III (b. 1956), is the inheritor of the Sokoto legacy and a prominent spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslims.

Several Islamic reform movements have taken place in Nigeria since the late 1970s, including the Izala movement, Maitatsine, and Darul Islam. Most of the participants in the early movements were interested in sectarian concerns such as guiding the Muslim community and “correcting” its faith. The more recent movements Jama‘atu Ahl as-Sunnah li-Da‘awati wal-Jihad (JASDJ; also referred to as “Boko Haram”) and , which many see as arising out of the Maitatsine movement, has received international press attention because of its increasingly militant actions. Meanwhile, many Muslims of different strands and beliefs reject Boko Haram’s ideas and methods.

Sources

"Chapter 1: Religious Affiliation," Pew Research Center, August 9, 2012, accessed March 12, 2014.

“Nigeria,” World Christian Encyclopedia, eds. David B. Barrett et al, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 549-555.

The Jama’tu Nasril Islam (“Group for the Victory of Islam”) was founded in 1962 by a coalition of Muslim leaders in northern Nigeria, and served as an umbrella organization for a variety of Muslim groups and interests. The goal of the organization was to unify northern Muslims and to promote their interests in the wake of independence and the formation of the first Nigerian Republic. Following the assassination of Ahmadu Bello, a prominent northern Muslim politician and descendent of Usman Dan Fodio, the northern Muslim community became fragmented. In the 1970s, the JNI’s leader, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, became critical of its apparent lack of strict Islamic discipline, and encouraged followers to break away and form the Izala, which eclipsed it in the following decade.

Sources

Toyin Falola and Ann Genova, “Jama’atu Nasril Islam,” Historical Dictionary of Nigeria, eds. Toyin Falola and Ann Genova (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2009), p. 178.

Roughly 3,000 Nigerian Igbos practice Rabbinic Judaism, and there are around twenty Nigerian synagogues. Long referred to as the “Jews of Nigeria” (though for their flexibility and business acumen), many in the wider Igbo tribe identify themselves as descendants of a Lost Tribe of Israel, one of ten tribes that constituted the Kingdom of Israel that scattered following the Kingdom’s destruction at the hands of Assyrians in 721 BCE.

Though there are no local rabbis, the Jewish Igbo are mentored by an American, Rabbi Howard Gorin. Jewish Igbo elders lead the two Nigerian synagogues in the place of official rabbis. These elders converted to Judaism from Christianity in the 1990s after encountering the faith through the Internet (learning Hebrew online, as well). Nigerian synagogues follow Sephardic and Edot Hamizrah customs blended with local tradition.

19^th century Christian missionaries in Africa used the ‘Lost Tribe’ narrative that placed the native tribes which they contacted on a historical continuum—beginning with their expulsion from Israel—as a way to initiate the tribe’s return to Christianity. Though various communities have claimed descent, the State of Israel has yet to officially acknowledge any.

Sources

Shai Afsai, “Hanging Haman with the Igbo Jews of Abuja,” The Times of Israel, April 30, 2013, accessed September 3, 2013.

William F.S. Miles, “Among the “Jubos” During the Festival of Lights,” Transition, No. 105 (2011), pp. 30-45.

William F.S. Miles, Jews of Nigeria: An Afro-Judaic Odyssey (Princeton: Marcus Wiener Publishers, 2013).

Image Credits:

Untitled image of Jewish Igbo children, Jeff Lieberman, Re-Emerging Films.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a prominent Ogoni environmental activist in Nigeria’s southern delta region, hanged in 1995 by the Sani Abacha government on exaggerated charges along with eight other activists. Saro-Wiwa was a co-founder of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), which directly challenged the rise of international oil corporations in the delta—particularly Shell—and the expansive corruption that oil wealth facilitated.

MOSOP called for $10 billion for royalties and compensation from Shell for the Ogoni land where they drilled, for the environmental destruction caused by oil production and waste dumping (which have devastated the local fishing economy, upon which Ogoni and other local peoples rely), and a say in future oil exploration. When requests were denied, Saro-Wiwa organized mass protests that effectively shut down oil production and which triggered a heavy-handed response from the Nigerian military, resulting in an estimated 2,000 deaths. MOSOP served as an inspiration for other anti-oil organizations, including the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

Saro-Wiwa was a winner of the 1994 Right Livelihood Award and the 1995 Goldman Environmental Prize, in recognition for his environmental activism. His execution was followed by international outrage and Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations, an organization of 54 former British colonial states.

Sources

Sebastian Junger, “Blood Oil,” Vanity Fair, February 2007, accessed September 20, 2013.

The Mahdiyyah was an Islamic messianic, sociopolitical and Sufi movement led by Muhammad Ahmad bin ‘Abdullah (d. 1885), who declared himself the mahdi, or messiah in 1881. ‘Abdullah led a successful military opposition against the Anglo-Egyptian army in the Sudan—drawing upon the resentment felt by many Sudanese against the colonial forces—but was overpowered by British forces in the 1890s. ‘Abdullah’s followers were known as the ansar, a historical reference to the people of Medina who supported the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and his community following their flight from Mecca.

A series of Mahdist revolts in northern Nigeria presented a significant military challenge during the period of colonial conquest (1897-1903), attracting Hausa and Songhay radical clerics, peasants, and escaped slaves, with no support from the ruling Fulani. Mahdists sought not only to deter colonial rule, but to take down the Fulani Sokoto Caliphate. Sokoto leaders and the British joined forces to quell the revolts, thereby deepening their preexisting alliance. These Mahdists were inspired by what had happened in previous decades in the Sudan, but had no direct connection with the Sudanese uprisings and instead of looking to ‘Abdullah as the mahdi, considered the mahdi forthcoming.

Sources

Paul E. Lovejoy and J. S. Hogendorn, “Revolutionary Mahdism and Resistance to Colonial Rule in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1905-6,” The Journal of African History, Vol. 31, No. 2 (1990), pp. 217-244.

Noah Saloman, “Undoing the Mahdiyya: British Colonialism as Religious Reform in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898-914,” The Religion and Culture Web Forum, May 2004, accessed September 23, 2013.

The Maitatsine riots were a series of violent uprisings instigated by Islamist militants in northern Nigeria between 1980 and 1985 and represented northern Nigeria’s first major wave of religiously-inspired violence. The riots prompted immense ethnoreligious discord between Muslims and Christians in years to come.

The Maitatsine movement was led by Muhammadu Marwa (d. 1980), a Cameroonian residing in Kano who opposed the Nigerian state (Maitatsine is a Hausa term for “He who damns,” referring to Marwa). He referred to himself as a prophet—to the extent that one account reports that some of his followers referred to Marwa in lieu of the Prophet Muhammad as God’s prophet—and a reformer (mujaddid), with reference to Usman Dan Fodio. He was also notable for his vociferous condemnation of Western culture, education, and technology, and Marwa was known to refer to anyone who sent their children to a state school as an “infidel,” which is echoed in the contemporary Boko Haram movement.

Marwa’s followers were young, poor men, particularly former seasonal laborers economically displaced by the oil boom as well as petty merchants and youths seeking an Islamic education in Kano. Prior to the oil boom the urban poor were regarded as worthy recipients of Islamic charity; against the backdrop of economic changes—which included inflation and the destruction of the petty mercantile economy—they were looked at as hooligans and thieves. Thus, the socially and economically marginalized were receptive to Marwa’s anti-government message and exclusivist religious outlook.

The first riot broke out on December 18, 1980 in Kano and resulted in 4,000 deaths (including Marwa). Numerous other riots took place between 1980 and 1985, killing or injuring thousands of northern Muslims and Christians.

Sources

Adimbola O. Adesoji, “Between Maitatsine and Boko Haram: Islamic Fundamentalism an the Response of the Nigerian State,” Africa Today, Vol. 57, No. 4 (2011), pp. 98-119.

Elizabeth Isichei, “The Maitatsine Risings in Nigeria 1980-85: A Revolt of the Disinherited,” Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1987), pp. 194-208.

There are roughly 100,000 Mormons in Nigeria. The first Nigerian Mormons were converts who had acquired Mormon literature while traveling in the United States. These early converts were drawn by Mormonism’s emphasis on family and community, as well as the revisionist narrative that underscored a return to the early Christian church.

In 1964, this small group contacted the Utah headquarters of the Church of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) requesting further material and guidance. Missionaries were sent to Nigeria in the 1960s, but the Nigerian government was perturbed by the LDS stance towards non-whites—who until 1978 were not permitted to hold the priesthood (a position of divinely directed authority endowed upon male LDS deemed worthy) and refused to grant permanent visas that would allow missionary activity to officially commence. The Nigerians’ request to the American Mormons came as a surprise to the all-white church at a time of immense social and political change in the United States. Ultimately, international expansion drove changes in the LDS approach to race and diversity in the church.

The first Nigerians were officially baptized in 1978 and in 1980, the African West Mission (later the Nigeria Lagos Mission) was established. In 1998, LDS president Gordon Hinckley attended a gathering of 12,000 Nigerian Mormons in the southern city of Port Harcourt, returning in 2005 to dedicate Nigeria’s first Mormon temple in the nearby city of Aba. In recent years, the LDS Church has translated the Book of Mormon into several languages prevalent in Nigeria, including Ibo and Efik, which suggest that Mormon missionaries are focusing their efforts on Nigeria’s southern and eastern regions. However, local LDS gatherings do not draw on traditional local worship styles, and are austere compared to Pentecostal churches, which some scholars suggest is responsible for the relatively smaller growth of Mormonism in Nigeria compared to Pentecostalism.

Sources

Charles Adebayo, “Nigeria,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Newsroom, accessed September 18, 2013.

Newell Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People Within Mormonism (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1982).  

Eric Alden Eliason, Mormons and Mormonism: An Introduction to an American World Religion (Bloomington: University of Illinois Press, 2001).

Mary Jordan, “The New Face of Global Mormonism,” The Washington Post, November 19, 2007, accessed September 18, 2013.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) is one of the most prominent of a multitude of militant organizations dedicated to crippling oil production in the Niger Delta region.  It is made up of members of the Ijaw who charge the government and foreign oil companies with promoting immense economic disparities, corruption, and environmental degradation. MEND’s tactics include kidnapping and ransoming oil workers, staging armed attacks on production sites, pipeline destruction, killing Nigerian police officers, and siphoning oil to sell on the illegal market.

President Goodluck Jonathan, also an Ijaw, has overseen an amnesty program initiated in 2009 by his predecessor, Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua, which unlike previous programs not only accepted weapons for cash but also worked to reintegrate militant youth into society. However, the amnesty fails to address the ongoing imbalances in wealth and power that impact Ijaw and other peoples of the Niger Delta. Amnesty also fails to improve environmental and infrastructural conditions. Over 70% of delta residents continue to live without access to water, electricity, medical care and other services.

Most Ijaw are Christian, though many also continue to practice indigenous Ijaw religious practices. The religious dimensions of MEND’s activities have been unclear, though recently a MEND spokesman issued a threat against Islamic targets in the south, citing violent attacks by Boko Haram against Christian targets in northern Nigeria as its impetus. “Operation Barbarossa” was later called off following the protests of religious groups and the imprisonment of suspected MEND leader Henry Okah for his role in twin car bombings in Abuja in 2010.

Nana Asma’u (1793-1864) was a respected Hausa-Fulani Islamic scholar, poetess, an educator of both men and woman during the period of the Sokoto Caliphate, and a devoted Qadiri Sufi. She was the daughter of Usman Dan Fodio, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, and reflects the importance placed on education—whether for men or women—among the Muslim Hausa-Fulani, and which always had a religious underpinning.

Sources

Beverly B. Mack and Jean Boyd, One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma’u, Scholar and Scribe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).

The National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons was a nationalist political party founded by Sir Herbert Macaulay and Nnamde Azikiwe, and dominated Nigerian politics until the mid-1930s. After 1951, the NCNC became largely identified with Igbo interests following the inclusion of the Igbo State Union. In 1963, Azikiwe, an Igbo himself, became the first president of independent Nigeria.

The NCNC was regarded critically by other Nigerian groups for its affinity with Igbo interests, particularly by the Yoruba Action Group (AG) founded in 1951 and the Northern People’s Congress led by Ahmadu Bello.

Olusegun Obasanjo (b. 1937) is a former President of Nigeria (1999-2007) and a military leader who handed power to a civilian government in 1979. He led the commando unit against Biafran secessionists during the Nigerian Civil War that received the Biafrans’ surrender. Obasanjo is an Evangelical Christian of Yoruba descent (and a former Baptist Christian) from the Southwest of Nigeria. Obasanjo is unusual among Nigerian leaders for shying away from the spotlight and appearing not to actively seek power. In both instances of his leadership, the first as a military leader and the second as the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, he assumed the presidency because the former leader had died.

Obansanjo was a critic of military rule, and particularly of the Sani Abacha regime. He was sentenced to prison in 1995 for allegedly plotting a coup against Abacha, and was released in 1998 with Abacha’s death and the leadership of General Abdulsalami Abubakar. During the 1999 elections, Obansanjo received significant support from northern Muslims due especially to the backing of former military leader Ibrahim Babangida, in part for his awareness of and tact towards military politics but also for his ability to allay southern fears of northern political dominance. However, Obasanjo was critical of the spread of Islamic courts in the north, and he subsequently lost much of the northern support when he ran for reelection, which he won in 2003 buoyed by the southern vote.

Sources:

Dan Isaacs, “Profile: Olusegun Obasanjo,” BBC News, April 21, 2003, accessed November 22, 2013.

Cyril Imo, “Evangelicals, Muslims, and Democracy in Africa: With Particular Reference to the Declaration of Sharia in Northern Nigeria,” Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa, ed. Terence O. Ranger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 37-66.

The Oyo Empire (1400-1830s) was a powerful Yoruba polity in what is today southwestern Nigeria. Situated in an ideal geographic location between the Volta and Niger River, the Oyo Empire became an important trade center. Its foundation myth draws upon Yoruba religious beliefs and holds sacred the original settlement of Ile-Ife, which continues to be upheld as the creation site for the Yoruba people with significance to local religious practitioners as well as members of African-derived religions outside of Nigeria. Increased trade with European colonial powers, internal strife (which provided a constant stream of captives to be sold to Europeans to fuel the transatlantic slave trade), a weakened army, and the growth of Islamic expansionist movements led to the collapse of the Oyo Empire.

Sources:

Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Pentecostalism is a charismatic Protestant Christian movement that emphasizes a personal encounter with Jesus Christ as savior and healer, with the potential for converts to be “born again” as Christians. Nigerian Pentecostalism emerged in the 1970s as university-educated, charismatic youth began creating their own spaces for worship. Its roots are in the African Initiated Churches (such as the Aladura) and especially in American and British Evangelical and Pentecostal of the 1960s, which Nigerians encountered through international studies, Pentecostal outreach, and American televangelism and other Christian media. As such Nigerian Pentecostalism combines elements of African worship while emphasizing its place among transnational Pentecostal networks, which have grown through conversion as well as robust immigration. The success of the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria inspired widespread ‘charismatization’ of Nigerian churches, which, by the late 1970s, widely attracted members of the Christian upper middle class.

The emergence of Nigerian Pentecostalism followed a period of immense post-independence instability, characterized by violence (the civil war, especially), political corruption, and rise of the military government. The oil boom of the 1970s transformed the Nigerian landscape, particularly in the south, where a well-connected elite profited and conspicuous consumption blossomed. On the one hand, this made life more difficult for the vast majority of people who increasingly turned to religious organizations to provide for their basic needs. Pentecostal leaders reflected this in their condemnations of wealth. In years that followed, some Pentecostal leaders became wealthy themselves as they directed their services to the wealthy, emphasizing a prosperity gospel which holds that faith is the key to prosperity in this world. In so doing these pastors contextualized the privilege of Nigeria’s Christian elite, and attracted hundreds of thousands of poor and middle class Nigerians aspiring to greater wealth. This approach provides the foundation for many of Nigeria’s megachurches, including the 50,000-seat Faith Tabernacle in Lagos, run by David Oyedopo, Africa’s wealthiest pastor.

Nigerian Pentecostal Christians are partly responsible for rising interreligious violence between Muslims and Christians in northern Nigeria. Both Pentecostal and Islamist movements of the 1970s were largely youth-based and offered an exclusivist message that frequently demonized the other. In particular, Pentecostal theology condemned Islamic healing practices (the use of amulets, etc.), Sufi rituals, symbols such as the star and crescent, and characterized Islam as a threat to Christians and Christianity. These beliefs resonated in Pentecostals’ activism against the introduction of Islamic law (shari’a), and in suspicions of a supposed Islamic conspiracy to make Africa a Muslim continent by 2005.

Robust evangelical efforts in northern Nigeria, particularly German-born Reinhard Bonnke’s revival at a sports stadium in Kano in 1991, where vans were sent to gather poor Muslims from the streets of Kano for prayer and healing in an effort to win converts. Events such as these triggered hostility, violence, and competition over the control of public spaces where Christian Pentecostals increasingly asserted themselves in the north. Pentecostals’ political activism and engagement confirm to some Muslims that the secular state masks Christian and Western foundations and intentions, in part fueling Islamists’ sense of disenfranchisement and resistance to the state.

Sources

Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Ogbu Kalu, The Collected Essays of Ogbu Uke Kalu, Volume 1: African Pentecostalism: Global Discourses, Migrations, Exchanges and Connections, eds. Wilhelmina J. Kalu, Nimi Wariboko, and Toyin Falola (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2010).

Ogbu Kalu, “Sharia and Islam in Nigerian Pentecostal Rhetoric, 1970-2003,” The Collected Essays of Ogbu Uke Kalu, Volume 3: Religions in Africa: Conflicts, Politics and Social Ethics, eds. Wilhelmina J. Kalu, Nimi Wariboko, and Toyin Falola (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2010), pp. 87-105.

Ruth Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Daniel Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

The Republic of Biafra was a secessionist state at the center of a bloody three year civil war from 1967 to 1970, waged against the Nigerian government, and named for an Atlantic bay in southwestern Nigeria known as the Bight of Biafra. The leader of the secessionist movement was Igbo General Emeka Ojukwu, who had served as the regional governor prior to the outbreak of the war, and had both loyalty from the population and significant control over the media.

The war was prompted by several events. First, northern and western Nigerians perceived that a 1966 coup led by Roman Catholic Igbo Major Kaduna Nzeogwu—during which a number of non-Igbo leaders were executed, including Prime Minister Abubakar Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Bello’s wife, and western premier Samuel Akintola—was an Igbo-led initiative against northern dominance. This led to a violent backlash against the Igbo, including a 1966 counter-coup resulting in the deaths of several hundred Igbo military officers and deadly attacks against Igbo living in the north, causing a massive migration of 2 million Igbo refugees to their traditional homeland in the east. However, it is incorrect to assume that the Igbo were alone in the war. In fact, Nigeria’s east is as diverse as the entire nation, and Yoruba, Kalabari, and Ogoni were also represented in leadership positions fighting alongside the Igbo.

Another important motivation behind the secession was the high concentration of oil reserves in the east, and tensions over the relatively few benefits received by regional inhabitants compared to the immense oil wealth benefiting the nation. Biafran leaders anticipated that oil companies would support their side in the war in return for favorable oil contracts. However, these companies chose a more conservative policy and lent support to the Nigerian government. During early reconciliation talks prior to the war between Ojukwu and Nigerian head of state Yakubu Gowon, Ojukwu redirected local revenue to local treasuries, and away from the federal treasury, citing the support needed for Igbo refugees as discussed during the talks. However, the government portrayed Gowon’s action as redirecting oil wealth in the east away from other Nigerians, and responding by preventing services from reaching the eastern region. Shortly thereafter, Gowon split the eastern region into three, which was followed by Ojukwu’s declaration of secession and war.

The civil war was immensely destructive, with high casualties on both sides. The Nigerian government imposed a blockade on the region, which eventually came to include humanitarian aid. Catholic missions inside of Biafra were instrumental in sharing news and images with the international community. Ojukwu fled to Cote d’Ivoires on January 11, 1970, and the Biafrans surrendered on January 15.

Another recent attempt at secession took place in 2005 led by the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (Massob), who called for the release of their imprisoned leader, the release of a Niger Delta militant environmental activist (see MEND), and lambasted corruption in Nigerian politics, but was swiftly put down by the Nigerian government. Igno ethnic nationalism, an upsurge in Pentecostalism, and the widespread belief among Igbo that they are deliberately marginalized by the Nigerian government account provide the fertile soil for continued grievances against the state and fuel the continuing desire for secession.

Sources

Eddie Enyeobi Okafor, “Republic of Biafra,” Encyclopedia of Africa, eds. Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 178-180.

Trevor Rubenzer, “Nigeria: 1967-1970,” Civil Wars of the World: Major Conflicts Since World War II (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007), pp. 567-584.

Daniel Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria, eds. Karl DeRouen and Uk Heo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

Sani Abacha was a military dictator who led Nigeria from 1993 to 1998, and is remembered for the ruthlessness and corruption of his leadership. He and his family siphoned over $1 billion USD from the state, and he oversaw a level of unprecedented state-directed violence, most notably captured in the execution of peaceful environmental rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa on trumped-up charges.

Abacha had been a participant in two previous coups, the first in 1983 leading to the military rule of Muhammadu Buhari, and in 1985, which replaced Buhari with General Ibrahim Babangida (who appointed Abacha minister of defense in 1990). Abacha staged a third coup in 1993 after Babangida annulled the results of a democratic election, and henceforth Abacha dissolved Nigeria’s democratic institutions, including the  national assembly, banned political parties, and replaced state governors with military commanders.

Though a Muslim from the northern city of Kano, his death prompted wild speculation as to Abacha’s religious practices, with claims that the grounds of his home contained numerous shrines containing human and animal body parts used in religious rituals—linking images of corruption, violence, libidinal excess, and the occult.

Sources

Eric Bennett, “Sani Abacha,” Encyclopedia of Africa, eds. Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 1.

Ruth Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Shi’ism is one of two main sectarian branches in Islam (the other is Sunni Islam), and reflects significant doctrinal, cultural, and political differences. Nigeria has a small but growing Shi’a population of roughly 4 million. In addition to a significant Lebanese expatriate community that has been present since the 19^th century, there are Isma’ili Shi’is in Nigeria and, increasingly, individuals who pursue a more militant strain of Shi’ism under the leadership of Ibrahim al-Zakzaky (b. 1953) and the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), which has been active since the 1980s. Zakzaky participated in northern Nigerian protest movements in the 1970s during his time as an economics student at Ahmadu Bello University, from which he was expelled for his anti-government political activities in 1979.

Originally a Sunni, Ibrahim al-Zakzaky was inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and called for a similar overthrow of the Nigerian government and complete institution of Islamic law. He identified himself as a Shi’a Muslim in one of his many popular cassette sermons that circulated around northern Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s. He was imprisoned numerous times throughout this period for his seditious speech and calls to revolution. The IMN was responsible for violence in Katsina in the 1990s, encouraged by Zakzaky, and has recently been implicated in running militant training camps that have been linked to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and to Iran. Zakzaky remains an outspoken critic of northern Nigeria’s political elite, and continues to push for a more thorough adoption of Islamic legal principles and systems.

Sources

Toyin Falola, ”Violence and Conflict in the 1990s,” Readings in African Politics, ed. Tom Young (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 68-79.

Dawit Giorgis, “Nigeria’s Hezbollah Problem,” CNN, June 14, 2013, accessed September 11, 2013.

Pew Research Center, “Mapping the Global Muslim Population,” Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project, October 7, 2009, accessed September 11, 2013.

Sir Herbert Macauley (1864-1946) was a Yoruba Nigerian nationalist, political activist, and engineer who founded the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP). Macauley was also the grandson of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first African bishop in the Anglican Church. His father was, like his grandfather, a CMS missionary and the founder of the CMS Grammar School in Lagos. His urban upbringing, Anglican education, and later European education made Macauley a part of the Lagos intelligentsia.

Though not uniformly anti-British, Macauley was a loud critic of the colonial system. He founded the NNDP in 1923, which dominated local Lagos politics for the following two decades, though he himself was unable to run for office due to two prior convictions. In 1944 he joined with Nnamde Azikiwe to form the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons, of which he was president, and which represented Nigerian nationalist aspirations.

Sources

Mark Lipshtuz and R. Kent Rasmussen, “Herbert Macaulay,” Dictionary of African Historical Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 128-129.

The Sokoto Caliphate was a West African Empire that became a part of northern Nigeria. It was founded by the charismatic Fulani Islamic scholar and political leader Usman dan Fodio upon his conquer of the Hausa people. Usman dan Fodio created a unified political and economic polity while promulgating a reformist Islamic movement meant to correct syncretic, lax, or superficially Islamic practices in the region. The Sokoto Caliphate was conquered by British colonial forces in 1903 and the territory was divided between British, French, and German powers. While the caliphate itself was abolished, the British retained the honorary position of Sultan which continues to be recognized in contemporary Nigeria as an influential religious and spiritual leader.

Sources:

Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).