Nigeria has one of the largest unreached people groups in the world, including the Fulani people, who number over 15 million. This article explores the history of missionary work in Nigeria, highlighting the involvement of missionaries over the decades and their impact on the Nigerian people.
Map of ethnic groups in Nigeria
Early Missionary Involvement in Nigeria
The history of missionaries living among Nigerian people dates back to the late 1800s. Missionaries in Nigeria during the late 1800s were involved through training young men as evangelists and helping women’s rights improve among the tribal people. Today, missionaries have brought Holistic Development Centers, education, and medical care into Nigeria with the purpose of spreading the Gospel.
Pioneering Female Missionaries
Two notable missionaries to Nigeria in the late 1800s and early 1900s were Johanna Veenstra and Mary Slessor. Both of these women had a deep love for Nigerians and dedicated their lives to serving the people and spreading the Gospel within Nigeria.
Johanna Veenstra
Johanna Veenstra was a missionary to Nigeria in the early 1900s. Before journeying to Nigeria, she attended a Union Missionary Training Institute at the age of nineteen. Johanna felt a call to serve the people in Nigeria, so she set sail to the continent of Africa. While on the way, she feared the ocean would kill her.
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She finally arrived in Africa in January 1920. There, she feared she would be killed in the deeps of Nigeria. Her fear did not stop her from sharing the Gospel. She was the first missionary sent through the Christian Reformed Church and served along with one other woman.
She had a passion for women and raised up many Nigerian women to be leaders and see the value they brought to the Kingdom of God. Another passion of hers was for making disciples of the young people. She encouraged these young people to find the call God had on their lives and serve Him with their whole hearts.
While on the field, she continued to write letters to the Christian Reformed Church in North America. She wrote to them about the importance of the work she was doing. She passed away in 1933, but her legacy still lives on to this day.
Seven years after she died, the Christian Reformed Church officially adopted Nigeria as their mission field. They even have a seminary named after her called, “Veenstra Seminary” in Donga, Nigeria. The Christian Reformed Church of Nigeria is still going strong to this day. Her love and passion for the people in Nigeria affected the people in her church and encouraged them to carry on the work she started.
Mary Slessor
Mary Slessor dedicated her life to serving the people of Nigeria in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Mary felt called to missions at the age of 26 after hearing about David Livingstone’s life as a missionary in Africa. She became a missionary teacher through the United Presbyterian Church.
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In 1876, her dream became a reality as she set sail for Nigeria. During her first three years, she worked to end the sacrificing of human life among the tribal people. Mary felt she had to stand against this evil and show them the value of children.
Years later, Mary was appointed the judge by the British consul in the Okoyong territory. Mary was able to protect the tribe she had become a part of against the British consul. The consul sought to take away the tribe’s culture in order to end the violence. Mary fought to allow them to keep their culture and transform the people within the tribe with the love of Jesus Christ.
Mary Slessor was a brave woman who fought against injustices taking place among tribes in Nigeria. She had a love for the people and laid down her own life so they would have the opportunity to hear the Gospel. She also helped to transform the British culture to see the Nigerians as people. Her impact on Nigerian continues on to this day.
Mary Slessor
Contemporary Missionaries in Nigeria
Two missionaries serving in Nigeria currently are Katie Morrison with Mission Africa & Youth with a Mission (YWAM). Both of these missionaries are working to share the Gospel with the Nigerian people.
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Katie Morrison and Mission Africa
Katie Morrison is a missionary with Mission Africa in Nigeria. Her position at Mission Africa is to oversee the short term mission teams and to help with outreach. She moved there after visiting Nigeria on mission trips and has worked with Mission Africa since 2010.
One of the main goals of Mission Africa is to reach the Fulani people in Nigeria. They are one of the largest unreached people groups in Nigeria with over 15 million people. Their Islamic beliefs lead to persecution among Christians. Their ministry is also working to provide medical resources, training churches, and working with vulnerable women.
Katie Morrison and Mission Africa are working to bring the Gospel to the unreached Fulani people. They also work to help provide schooling and medical care for Nigerians. Their ministry is focused on spreading the news of Jesus Christ within Nigeria!
Youth with a Mission (YWAM) Nigeria
Youth with a Mission Nigeria is one of over 1,000 YWAM bases over the world. It’s located in Lagos, Nigeria with a population of over 16 million people. God moved on Paul and Blessing Davo hearts in 2010 to be strategic and in how they extend God’s Kingdom.
From this call, they planted a base within Lagos, to spread the Gospel message to Nigerians. This YWAM base is also known as a “Holistic Development Center” because of its focus on human development among young people. They work to help Nigerians grow mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
YWAM Nigeria is raising up youth in Nigeria to follow Christ and dedicate their lives to serving His kingdom.
Youth With A Mission Nigeria
Impact and Influence of Missionary Activities
The missionary activities in Nigeria has brought about a number of positive achievements, especially their educational programs helped to whip-up the consciousness of a shared identity and helped to train many people that championed the course of nationalism and constituted a virile leadership for the young nation at independence. They also help in arriving at a more organized and solemn worship atmosphere.
However, the coming of Christianity through the missionaries to Nigeria had great effects on our culture, especially loss of cultural identity. The language we speak, the way we worship and how we make music is not left out in this struggle. Music and worship styles became influenced by western styles of music and Christian themes.
This made the church to reject the African traditional way of singing our local musical genres and the use of local instruments in worship but accepted the imported musical instruments. It is just of recent that an interest in using African instruments such as drums in the church became acceptable.
Culturally, music, singing and dancing reach deep into the innermost parts of African people. Westerners do not understand the beauty and organization of African music and often mislabel the music as “primitive” or rhythmic dissonance. As Africans, we are fond of singing and God is often worshiped through songs. This type of singing most time may be spontaneous or organized.
African knowledge of God is verbalized in songs because the great music in any culture is that which satisfies emotionally, intellectually, and aesthetically according to Vida Chenoweth in his book “Melodic Perception and Analysis.” The failure of the earlier missionaries to Nigeria to understand this cultural value we placed on our heritage made a lot of people to reject the gospel and that effect is still on our local churches till today to some extent.
If church leaders can contextualize worship, people will come to church and lives will be saved and transformed. Thinking about this function of contextualization in expanding the universal church’s understanding of God, I am reminded of the picture we are given in Revelation 7:9 of people from every ethnolinguistic group surrounding the throne of God, not worshiping God in English, or even English as a second language, but in their own language shaped by their own worldview and culture. We can count on hearing about 6,280 languages. The view we get of the kingdom is a multicultural view, not one of ethnic uniformity.
One of the things we admire most about the Gospel is its ability to speak within the worldview of every culture. Just as Jesus emptied himself and dwelt among us, every missionary and Christian-alike must be willing to do likewise as we enter another culture with the Gospel. The incarnation is our model for contextualization, as J. D.
Map of religions in Nigeria
Christian Denominations in Nigeria
The Catholic Church has an increase of followers in Nigeria. The Apostolic Church Nigeria is a Pentecostal Christian denomination in Nigeria, affiliated with the Apostolic Church. Its headquarters is in Lagos. The General Council of the Assemblies of God Nigeria has its origins in the Nigerian Church of Jesus Christ and a partnership with the Assemblies of God USA in 1934. The council was founded in 1964. The Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN), formerly Church of Christ in Nigeria, is a Christian denomination in Nigeria. It was founded in 1904. Its headquarters are in Jos, Plateau State. It used to have the name of Ekklesiyar Kristi A Nigeria. The Evangelical Reformed Church of Christ was formed in Nasarawa State on 8 July 1916. The Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria (LCCN) is a major Lutheran denomination in Nigeria, a member of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). It was established as an independent church in 1913 from the Sudan United Mission, Danish Branch (SUMD), known today as Mission Afrika.
The Methodist Church Nigeria is one of the largest Methodist denominations in the world and one of the largest Christian churches in Nigeria, with around two million members in 2000 congregations. The Nigerian Baptist Convention had about 6.5 million baptized members in 2008. The Baptist Mission was started by Thomas Jefferson Bowen in 1850. It currently has thirty-five conferences in different ecclesiastical in Nigeria. The Presbyterian Church of Nigeria has almost 4 million members in thousands of congregations mainly in Nigeria, but has a regional Presbytery in Togo as well as in Benin. It was founded in the mid-1800s, by ministers of the Church of Scotland. The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) is a Pentecostal mega church and denomination founded in Lagos, Nigeria. The General overseer (most senior pastor) is Enoch Adeboye, ordained in 1981. The QIC-United Evangelical Church (Founded as Qua Iboe Church) is a Christian denomination in Nigeria. Within Nigeria, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also has a growing presence.
Aladura is a classification of churches that abide by a Christian religious denomination or trend inspired by activities of progressive church elements, J.B. Sadare, D.O. Odubanjo, I.O. Sanya and others in 1918. The denomination has over 3 million adherents worldwide. The Aladura movement started at Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria in 1918. This movement later metamorphosed to Living Faith Church Worldwide (whose headquarters is the Faith Tabernacle) and to the Christ Apostolic Church. The Church of the Lord (Aladura) is an African Initiated Church founded by Josiah Olunowo Ositelu in 1925, and inaugurated in 1930 in Ogere Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria.
Since the 1990s, there has been significant growth in many other churches, independently started in Africa by Africans, particularly the evangelical Protestant ones. These include the mostly charismatic and Pentecostal denominations such as Mountain of Fire and Miracles, Christ Embassy, Streams of Joy International, Celestial Church of Christ and Dominion City.
Nigerian Flag
Challenges and Persecution
The killings have been referred to as a silent genocide. Persecution of Christians in Nigeria is pervasive and ongoing. "Christians are also routinely denied land to build churches. The last time a Certificate of Occupancy was issued for a church building within the Diocese of Maiduguri was in 1979. Christian students are denied Christian religious curricula in the primary and secondary levels, and instead are forced to study Islam. They’re denied jobs and promotions in government parastatals.
Since the early 2000s, Nigeria has witnessed a growing trend of young people turning away from Christianity and embracing Indigenous African spirituality. This shift has been partly driven by disillusionment with perceived materialism in Christian churches and a renewed desire to reconnect with ancestral traditions.
Traditional spirituality in Nigeria, especially among the Igbo people, emphasizes a close relationship with nature, ancestors, and local deities, often blending with Christian practices in everyday life. One notable case is Chidi Nwaohia, born in 1966 in southeastern Nigeria, who was raised as a devout Christian but gradually embraced his calling as a dibia (traditional priest) after a series of personal experiences and prophetic revelations. Officially ordained in 1993, Nwaohia now leads spiritual rites that involve libations, ancestral offerings, and seasonal festivals.
Despite facing stigma and marginalization, stemming largely from colonial missionary portrayals of Indigenous beliefs as "pagan", many converts continue to practice both Christianity and African spirituality simultaneously. Others, like former Catholic priest Echezona Obiagbaosogu, have formally renounced Christianity to fully embrace Indigenous religion, citing a lack of spiritual fulfillment in their former faith. Critics of mainstream Christianity in Nigeria point to the commercialization of the faith, exploitative practices by some clergy, and exclusionary policies, such as denying funerals to members over unpaid levies, as reasons for disaffection.
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