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.