VICE PRESIDENT
5.0 Introduction
In this chapter an attempt is made to reconstruct the histories of the various Pentecostal churches in Adamawa State. The chapter draws on materials gathered during field work in Adamawa over a period of four years. Interviews were conducted with leaders and principal players of the Pentecostal and mainline churches in Adamawa. Structured and unstructured questions have been used in collecting the material for this chapter. Sources have been carefully scrutinized for reliability. The chapter aims to acquaint the reader with the early beginnings of the first Pentecostal churches, namely the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) and the Assemblies of God Church (AG) in Adamawa.
A more detailed study of specific prominent and locally initiated Pentecostal churches is presented, supported by images of church leaders and places of relevance. The chapter includes a classification of Pentecostal churches, as seen and understood by the Pentecostals themselves as well as by mainline churches. The reasons for the shift in style and the teachings of the newer Pentecostals have been highlighted along with further information what makes these churches attractive.
Sources for the material in this chapter include, in addition to fieldwork, the researcher‟s observations and experience. Part of the information comes from books by leaders of the Pentecostal churches, church manuals, bulletins for worship and annual reports of churches.
5.1 Nigeria and the Development of Pentecostalism 1970-2005
In the night of 10th and morning of 11th January 1970, Nigeria emerged from its bloody civil war. The end of the civil war marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the country. The Eastern part, which during the war was named „Biafra‟, was re-united with the rest of the country and an impressive programme of “Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Reconciliation” was embarked upon by the general Gowon regime. The head of state declared at the end of the war that, “there was no victor, no vanquished.”236 This meant that
“the process of reconciliation” was made easier as the Igbo community, which chose to be on
236Ishaya, 1984, p.22.
the Biafran side, could not officially be discriminated against. With fears allayed and tensions calmed, the nation became united again and people were free to travel and live in any part of the country without fear of molestation. The Igbos, who had left the northern parts of the country en-masse in 1966, returned there, they were more than pleased to be re-united with their old friends, and could claim their land and properties back and reactivate their dormant bank accounts. The researcher has met several Igbos who returned to Adamawa in the middle of 1970. The same Igbos quickly sold their properties and returned to their homeland in the eastern part of the country, possibly to renovate their homes that had been damaged during the war, while some relocated to other parts of the country to establish new businesses.
The Igbo traders who went to the north to startup businesses had young evangelists also following on their trails. They brought Pentecostal messages, determined to bring Christianity to the Muslim north of Nigeria. A similar group of charismatic preachers all of them basically young Igbo people came to Adamawa. They were instrumental to the introduction of new Pentecostal churches in the state. Kalu argues:
Some of the southern youths who had not gone through universities but drank their charismatic spirituality in secondary schools surged through Muslim northern Nigeria founding ministries just at the time when many southerners were returning to the north after the civil war.237
Youthful evangelists, flooding northern Nigeria, were helped in their endeavours by the recent civil war that worked as a catalyst for the development of Pentecostalism, starting from Igbo land where the war had taken place and spreading to the rest of the country. Kalu gives a graphic description of the situation:
The religious landscape during the Nigerian-Biafran civil war situation is […] an important backdrop. It took many forms: there was a cultural renaissance because scarcity of money and social suffering enlarged the space for native doctors, the ancient cultures of communities, and especially social control models. Occult groups flourished because dire times needed quick solutions. The Aladura, who had not been very successful in certain parts of the country because of the strength of the mission churches, now proliferated as the prayer houses were established in the hinterland at the heels of fleeing refugees. The mission churches had much competition because their organized structures could not be maintained. Priests and nuns ran for safety after losing their congregations in the urban areas. British support for the Nigerian government disillusioned and angered many who thought that “Christian” England would easily recognize that eastern Nigerians constituted the bulwark of Christianity in the country. Patriotic propaganda harped on this perfidy, leaving the insinuation that western-type Christianity was not a reliable path. Many turned to the syncretistic prayer houses to deal with the inner and physical needs of the war condition. So
237 Kalu, 2007, pp.15-16, Accessed 15/3/2013.
ironically, the middle ground of Christianity gave way as the culture shifted to either the prayer houses or to the young radicalised SU boys and girls.238
These young and radicalized SU boys and girls were the Scripture Union members of the universities who became charismatics in their student days. It is clear from Kalu‟s submission, that anger, disillusionment over British government support for the Nigerian side during the civil war, and the inability of the mainline churches to address the poverty and situation of suffering among the Igbos during the war led them to embrace Pentecostalism en masse, producing thousands of evangelists who began to traverse Nigeria immediately after the war came to an end. It is however not clear why these youths took to evangelism in such great numbers.
Also the National Youth Service Corps had a great deal to do with the introduction of Pentecostalism in many parts of Nigeria. In Adamawa in particular, the corps members complemented the work of the young evangelists from the south.
The first move to bring Pentecostalism (its classical strand) to Nigeria had been made in the 1930s when several indigenous Aladura churches in Yoruba land began to link up with Pentecostal groups in Europe and America. The mainline churches had been established by mission societies. The Anglican Church for example is a product of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) from England. The fact that Britain was the colonial power in Nigeria, it was generally believed that the Anglican Church was favoured by the colonialists because it was their church. The Aladura church members were drawn mainly from the same Anglican Church. They joined up with European (mainly British) and American Pentecostal churches in order to obtain legitimacy and to get the moral and material support that the mainline churches enjoyed. As Kalu observes:
The Precious Stone Society in Ijebu-Ode and in Lagos, both Yoruba-speaking churches, became affiliated with the Apostolic Church in 1930. An Igbo congregation of Umuahia, a tongue-speaking group, calling itself the Church of Jesus Christ, invited the Assemblies of God from the USA to Nigeria in 1939.239
The two Pentecostal churches, namely the Apostolic Church and the Assemblies of God Church described by Kalu, were introduced into Adamawa State in 1960. The coming of the Apostolic Church and the Assemblies of God Church into Nigeria formed, according to Musa Gaiya, quoting Ojo, “…the beginning of modern Pentecostalism in Nigeria which occurred in the 1970s among students in the few existing tertiary institutions and secondary
238 Kalu, 2007, pp.13, Accessed 15/3/2013.
239 Kalu, Ogbu U. 1998. “Third Response: Pentecostalism and the Reconstruction of Christian Experience in Africa, 1970-1995.” Journal of African Thought, Vol.1 No.2, December, p.7.
schools. At tertiary level the Universities of Ibadan and Ife (Obafemi Awolowo University) became hotbeds of Pentecostalism.”240
The majority of students at these universities were from the south of Nigeria. Many had been adherents of Pentecostalism before they got to university. During student fellowships in the various universities in the South-West of Nigeria, their Pentecostal teachings influenced other students.
The Nigerian government‟s policies on education and its attempt to calm the nation socially and politically, aided the rapid circulation of Pentecostal ideas which until then had been a southern phenomenon but after the civil war speedily spread to the north. All this occurred between 1973 and 1975 with 'Unity Schools' being opened in all the states of the Federation as a way of integrating the children of Nigeria. During the same period seven new universities were opened.
By July 1973, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) had been introduced with the aim of making the youth serve in Nigerian states, cultures or environments, other than their own. It was hoped that the young graduates would learn more about their country, possibly take up appointments in their host states and communities and hopefully end up residing anywhere in the country without fear of intimidation.
All these changes could only be introduced successfully because of the expertise of young graduates, already influenced by Pentecostal ideas from the South-Western colleges of Lagos, Ibadan and Ife universities. The north had only one university, at Zaria, where the Pentecostals had little or no influence prior to the late seventies. The Sunday services in the chapel at Zaria University offered alternating Anglican and Baptist liturgies for Protestants, while the Catholics had their regular Sunday Mass. The east also had only one university at Nsuka that had been destroyed during the civil war and the early seventies were years of repairing war damage in the various university faculties.
The NYSC scheme has from its inception unintentionally sent fervent Pentecostal preachers around Nigeria. The scheme's decree states that:
The ultimate objective of the NYSC Scheme is to achieve national unity through mobilisation of the youths of this country for service in the NYSC Scheme. Corps members are to be exposed to life in other parts of the country and to learn at first hand the many similarities and diversities of culture and traditions of the various ethnic groups in the country with a view to eliminating any inherent prejudices, etc.
Corps members therefore have no choice as to where they would like to serve. Corps members are discouraged from lobbying for choice stations.241
240 Gaiya, M. A. B. 2002. “The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria.” Occasional paper, Centre for African Studies, University of Copenhagen, p.4.
241 Available on http://www.nysc.gov.ng, Accessed 10th August, 2010.
The NYSC scheme did not only achieve its objectives but, in addition, the young Nigerian graduates who were sent to work all over Nigeria took with them their faith in the type of Christianity they had embraced at universities in the south, namely the Pentecostalism so prevalent in modern day Nigeria. Many of these students had already taken to Pentecostalism before they went to university. In the 1980s they became avid readers of the plentiful available Pentecostal literature from Europe and America. 242 The new religious passion led to the establishment of evangelistic ministries, the best known of which is William Kumuyi‟s Deeper Life Christian Ministry.243
Ojo, quoted by Gaiya, notes that, “this was helpful to the growth of Christianity because these youths, being young, strong, agile and zealous could be found everywhere in the country preaching the Pentecostal gospel”.244
It should be added that the Corps (NYSC) members who from 1973 were posted in schools all over the country as teachers, used the opportunity to familiarize children in secondary schools with Pentecostal ideas. Towards 1975 several new universities were opened in the northern parts of Nigeria. Many young people who had been influenced by Pentecostalized teachers in secondary schools eventually entered universities and in turn, influenced others, thus strengthening the Pentecostal faith and the spread of its doctrines. By the time they left the universities they were convinced they had the right ideas about Christianity and set out to change the perceived coldness in their 'mother churches'. This was the situation described by the CAPRO Research Office in Jos, Nigeria in a 1991 publication,
“The Cross and the gods”. The authors write:
For over 6 years now, the church generally has been having problems with their youths. Those in schools and higher institutions were introduced to Pentecostal doctrines in their campus fellowship groups and came home critical of their home churches. This has caused a storm in many congregations. Today a lot of independent youth ministries have started as a result, such as Truth Foundation with headquarters in Numan. All the members were at one time members of LCCN but because of this doctrinal disagreement, they were sent out of the church. Today Truth Foundation has a church in Numan and plans to open others in various towns.245
The LCCN is the oldest and largest church in Adamawa State. Its headquarters are in Numan. The situation described above is discussed in more detail in this chapter under 5.3.2 below. It is however of note that the first leaders of the indigenous Pentecostal churches in
242 The works of popular Pentecostal preachers like Kenneth Hagin, Oral Roberts, Robert Tilton, Kenneth Copeland were the most commonly available books in the 1980s.
243 Gaiya, 2002, p.4.
244 Gaiya, 2002, p.4.
245 Ahmed, Bawa, Dauda and Ojo, (eds). 1993, p.91.
Adamawa were products of the new universities who had at high school been influenced by their Pentecostal teachers. They were young, energetic, and they zealously promoted the Gospel. In addition they were eloquent English-speakers and their command of the language added to their effectiveness.
The mainline churches did not seem prepared for the emergence of a new, highly educated and talented group of youngsters in Nigeria. The years 1970 to 1975 were characterized by the economic and educational transformation of Nigeria with many new schools at primary and secondary levels in every state and with seven new universities having been opened by 1975. The level of literacy was raised dramatically. Hence, the mass of Pentecostal literature from the USA and Europe could be read and readily understood at schools and universities. Meanwhile, the mainline churches were at a marked disadvantage, as mentioned earlier, because not enough English-speaking pastors had been trained. Pastors lacked the literacy levels and the communication skills to cope with a better educated congregation and, in fact, they found that, in terms of education, they had been left behind by many congregants.
The researcher found during field work in Adamawa State that in particular the younger people at the time had felt that their pastors were not well prepared for their tasks and communication was seriously hampered by their exclusive use of the vernacular. The establishment of a „Theological Education by Extension‟ (TEE) programme (still planned in the vernacular!), came too late to turn the tide. The youths were for the most part probably unaware that they were actually introducing a new strand of Christianity into Adamawa State.
They believed, as they clearly stated, that they were helping the evangelization of the state and that the mother churches stood to benefit from the programmes they set out to introduce.246
The NYSC scheme, discussed above, did achieve its professed objectives but unwittingly also aided the spread of Pentecostalism in Nigeria.