VICE PRESIDENT
5.3 The Formative Period of Pentecostalism in Adamawa State
5.3.1 The First Phase of Pentecostalism in Adamawa State
and faith over the Bachama (the other half of the Bwatiye group), Mbula, Kanakuru, Lunguda, Chamba, Kilba, Yungur, Lala, Ga‟anda and Mummuye. All these peoples remained traditionalists and live within a hundred miles or so from Yola.249 This situation left them open to the new Christian faith that was to be introduced in the region at the beginning of the 20th century.
5.3.1 (a) The Christ Apostolic Church (CAC)
The Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) was the first Pentecostal denomination introduced into Adamawa State. According to a CAPRO publication, the CAC was introduced in reaction to discontentment in the LCCN, especially in the Bwatiye areas. The CAPRO researchers write:
Over time, the LCCN lost some of its members to the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC). Some left the LCCN because they were discontented with the LCCN leadership in the area. Nominalism also forced some members out to start other churches like the CAC, which seemed more zealous.250
The CAC through its Zonal Secretary maintains that the CAC was introduced through the zealous efforts and commitment of members of the Bwatiye and Mbula ethnic groups.
These groups were the main occupants of the upper Benue River valley and had moved westwards down the river as migrant commercial fishermen. In the course of their journey they came into contact with the CAC at Agenebode, a town in Edo State in southern Nigeria.251
At Agenebode one Stephen Kuta Nzofite was converted. He became a CAC member in 1939 and he introduced other members of the Bwatiye and Mbula who accompanied him on fishing trips, to the new faith. They converted as well. In 1944 two Bwatiye converts, Iliya Kajila and Medan Tanei, returned to their home town, Imburu, where they established the CAC. Imburu, on the northern bank of the Benue River, directly opposite Numan, became CAC‟s first headquarters in Adamawa.252
Within a few years CAC followers were found in many Bwatiye, Mbula, Bali (Maya), Yandang, Kwah and Chobo (Pire) villages. For example, the CAC arrived in the Mbula village Dwam in 1946, at Bomni among the Maya in 1947, at Yandang in 1948, at Kwah in 1950 and by 1958 the CAC had been introduced among the Chobo people.253 (Yandang and Kwah are the names of two ethnicities as well as their towns).
According to Datti, a one-time assembly, district and zone-secretary and now a pastor of the CAC in Adamawa, the rapid spread of the CAC in the state was believed to be caused by the Holy Spirit who attracts new converts to the faith and uses them as agents for further expansion of the CAC in their areas of origin. Furthermore, many who were converted during
250Ahmed, Bawa, Dauda and Ojo, (eds.), 1993, p. 91.
251Datti, D. B. Note: The report is presented by Pastor Datti, D. Bitrus. Pastor Datti is a lecturer in the Adamawa State Polytechnic, Yola. He has served the CAC at various times as assembly, district and zonal secretary. He has conducted interviews with many pastors and other functionaries in the CAC
including Stephen Nzofite, the first Bwatiye man won over to the CAC. Datti has written a book on the CAC that is yet to be published, titled A History of the CAC Adamawa/Taraba States July, 2009.
252 Datti, July, 2009.
253 Datti, July, 2009.
commercial fishing trips in the south returned full of zeal, longing to establish the church in their home villages. In addition, many young people wanted to break away from the restrictive ways of their parents, as young people do, and wanted change, for example the change offered by the mode of worship of the CAC which allowed worshippers to freely sing and dance, pray aloud, and express their emotions. Although this was an exciting new experience, it also in a sense pointed back to ancient African traditions. The Apostolic Church and the Christ Apostolic Church are not seen as Pentecostal by most people in Adamawa. This is because their practices and mode of worship were at variance with mainline churches and they were nicknamed Ja’boko, a word the meaning of which could probably mean 'anti-book' in the Hausa language, referring to the fact that initially they were seen not to use hymnals from the very beginning of the their introduction to the northern parts of Nigeria (they taught and sang only choruses in their services).
Alisabatu Aliyuda, a Maya woman, remembers her childhood days when the CAC was introduced in her village: “…it was great fun because we could sing and dance for a very long time whenever we came to church”. 254 One of the songs they sang was:
Apostoli da dadi, Apostoli da dadi, Abinda ya sa, dokan sa da wuya.
Im bada wuya ba, da dukammu zamu tsira, Apostoli da dadi. 255
Or, translated:
Apostolic is sweet, Apostolic is sweet, The only difficulty, its rules are too stringent.
Had they not been stringent, all of us shall be saved, Apostolic is sweet.
Worshippers in the CAC would sing, dance and pray for several hours. While the song above says that its rules are too stringent, the CAC did continue to allow syncretistic practices on other aspects of religious life in worship and prayer styles and as regards obedience to the Ten Commandments. In general though, the CAC observes strict rules, especially in regard to prayer life. The church believes in exorcism and followers wake up very early every morning to pray and cast out demons. This phenomenon is common also in traditional religion as practiced in African societies.
The final, may be most important, reason for the appeal of CAC was that this churchopened its doors to polygamists, many of whom, though interested in Christianity, had
254 Alisabatu, A. Interviewed in Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria, February 2010
255.Alisabatu, February, 2010.
hitherto been shut out by the Lutheran SUM (D). In fact, in many villages, the CAC was introduced and led by people who were polygamists who converted to Pentecostalism. The efforts of a few itinerant evangelists, both men and women, contributed further to the rapid expansion of the CAC in Adamawa. 256
Meanwhile, the CAC has remained predominantly a Bwatiye and Mbula church in Adamawa State as most of its membership is drawn from these ethnic groups.
5.3.1 (b) The Assemblies of God Church (AG)
The Assemblies of God Church in Nigeria also known as „AG‟ was first established in 1939 in south eastern Nigeria among the Igbo people. Igbo traders, at work in Adamawa, mooted the idea of starting a congregation of their own in Jimeta, the seat of the British Colonial Government of Adamawa Province, in 1960. As these traders did not want to attend the Catholic or Anglican churches in town, they started prayer meetings and eventually founded their own church to meet their spiritual needs. One participant of the group suggested the name „Assemblies of God‟ for their church. He obviously had had contact with AG. In the words of Christopher Busari, AG supervisor in the Yola area, “the group started a fellowship in Nassarawo quarters in Jimeta, on the veranda of one Godwin Omekara‟s house. By 1962 a congregation was formed and moved to Luggere sector where the AG had acquired a property”.257
The AG got its first pastor in 1964, Rev. Osondu Okereke. In the same year another group was started in Njoboliyo with 12 men who had broken away from the LCCN. The CAPRO publication records:
In 1964 there was a split in the church which led to the first convert and others to leave and start the Assemblies of God church. The break-aways faced great persecution, and some were imprisoned. This is the only Assemblies of God church in the midst of all the LCCN churches in the Bata villages around Njoboliyo”.258
Busari corroborates that this took place, “…because they observed some insincerity in the life of some of the church leaders of the local LCCN congregation at Njoboliyo. The twelve men had complained to the Bishop Akila Todi of LCCN who did not respond to the said complaint. The group then broke away to start their own AG congregation, led by Chesed Dan-Pullo, one of their young men who was a student at an AG Bible College. Dan- Pullo later became their pastor and was imprisoned for six months with six other pioneer AG
256 Datti, July, 2009.
257 Rev. Busari, C. is the area supervisor of the Assemblies of God church Yola area. He is one of the sons of Batalmawus Busari, the first convert to Christianity in Njoboliyo village near Yola, Adamawa State. He was interviewed at Jimeta, 6th September, 2007.
258 Ahmed, Bawa, Dauda and Ojo, (eds), 1993, p.86.
members from Njoboliyo. The AG pastor Rev. Okereke and Mr. Anthony William kept encouraging the imprisoned members of the AG from Njoboliyo”. 259
The arrest and imprisonment of the AG members was unrelated to their migration from the Lutheran church to the AG, says Rev. Theman Muradu, one of the first LCCN pastors from Njoboliyo. Along with them, some Lutheran church members had been arrested and imprisoned as well. Rev. Muradu explains:
The arrest and imprisonment of the six persons had nothing to do with their faith either as Christians or AG members. My elder brother was one of them. It was a political issue. The men had organized the people in Njoboliyo to oppose the imposition of a particular political party on them. The local authorities wanted everyone in their domain to belong to a particular party, the Northern People‟s Congress (NPC) but we refused at that time. The six people arrested had been identified as ring leaders of the protest who wanted our people to join the party known as Action Group (AG) of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. They were therefore arrested for this and this reason only. Some of them were Lutherans while the others were members of the just introduced AG church.260
Busari‟s version of the establishment of the AG was not corroborated by Rev. Bulus Ndera either. Ndera maintained that the AG was introduced to his village for a different reason altogether and not because of any insincerity on the part of LCCN church leaders.
Rev. Bulus Ndera, who was a young council member at the LCCN in Njoboliyo at the time, had this to say:
In 1960 the council of the local LCCN church and the District Council identified and called one of its sons, Irmiya Mwasache, who was working as a ward attendant at the Numan Christian Hospital to be trained as pastor. Mr. Batalmawus Busari who was an elder in the church at Njoboliyo had wanted to be called, but this was denied him. He protested and wanted to spoil the name of Irmiya Mwasache. Busari along with Mallam Istifanus and Mallam Elisha opposed the call of Irmiya and so the three wrote a letter to the president of the LCCN, Rev. Akila Todi in 1960, stating among other things that, “Irmiya Mwasache shall never be useful to the church; he should therefore not be trained for ordination as pastor in the church.261
The president of the LCCN however sent the petition to the district council of the church at Njoboliyo for verification. The district council took great offence at
i. the inclusion of the names of council members in the petition they never wrote or saw, and
ii. The fact that their consent had not been sought before the petition was sent to Numan.
259 Rev. Busari, interviewed at Jimeta, 6th September, 2007.
260 Muradu, T., interviewed in Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria, 18th August, 2009.
261 Ndera, B., interviewed at Jimeta Adamawa State, Nigeria, 16th January, 2009.
The district council, therefore, resolved to suspend the writers of the petition namely, Busari, Istifanus and Elisha from the congregational and district councils until the three had apologized and recanted their action. Instead, in 1962 the three asked Chesed Dan Pullo to become their leader when they went to invite the AG in Jimeta to establish a church in Njoboliyo. Despite the continued efforts of the LCCN District Council, they refused to apologize, recant or return to the LCCN”.262 This according to Rev. Bulus Ndera was how the AG emerged in Njoboliyo.
According to the two narrations above, the AG had by 1962 been firmly established in both Jimeta and Njoboliyo.
Rev. Muradu in his contribution insists that AG for Action Group and AG for the Assemblies of God Church should not be confused, saying “…we were there; we know what exactly took place.”263 As regards the introduction of the AG to his village Njoboliyo, Muradu stated:
Chessed Dan-Pullo, the first Pastor of the AG in Njoboliyo was sent to the Bible School by the Lutheran church but somehow was convinced by his relatives among the AG members to decamp and join them since Irmiya was selected to go in for pastoral training. They were dissatisfied with the selection of Irmiya for the training but the real problem was that of the caste system among our people. Those who competed with Irmiya for selection for the training into the priesthood were considered to be Kissai, or „slaves‟ by our people in Njoboliyo. That is a very big problem among our people since becoming a pastor entails ascending to a leadership position. Our people do not accept easily the leadership of a person considered to be of obscure lineage. This is why those people got annoyed since they were considered unfit or unacceptable to hold a leadership position, even in the church. They therefore went and brought the AG, a church which they will have control over and call their own264.
It could be deduced from the arguments above that the actual background to the introduction of the AG in Njoboliyo and hence the AG‟s first inroad among local indigenous people consisted in a power tussle and the desire of the first convert in the village to become the first pastor as well. Another factor was the perpetuation of a caste system among the locals. Today, the AG has spread over all of Adamawa State. Its growth, starting in 1978, is outlined below.
1962-1977: the establishment of three congregations: Jimeta, Njoboliyo and Gwamba.
1978-1990: 15 new congregations are planted.
1991-1993: following a National Programme named the “Decade of Harvest”, 40 new congregations are initiated in Adamawa.
262 Ndera, interviewed, 16th January, 2009.
263 Muradu, interviewed, 18th August, 2009.
264 Muradu, interviewed, 18th August, 2009.
1994-1996: a further 13 congregations are established.
1999-2007: 20 new congregations are planted.265
At present, the AG has a presence in all the 21 local government areas of Adamawa.
The church has 94 pastors and a Bible college in Demsa near Yola. The college has offered diplomas since 1997 and also offers BA degrees by distance learning.266
At the time of compiling the present chapter, the AG had 96 congregations all over Adamawa and was led by an area supervisor, Rev. Christopher B. Busari.267 Rev. Busari happens to be a son of the elder at Njoboliyo Lutheran church who co-authored the petition to the LCCN headquarters and who played a role in the establishment of the AG at Njoboliyo in the early 1960s.