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The Middle Belt Movement and the formation of Christian Consciousness in Colonial Northern Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2020

Andrew E. Barnes
Andrew E. Barnes*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Extract

This article looks at the connection between a political movement and the evolution of Christian consciousness. It seeks to answer a series of questions not often asked, in hopes of demonstrating that these questions deserve more attention than they have generated in the past. Historians and mission scholars rightly expend a good deal of effort studying the transition in mission-established churches from European to indigenous control. Missions did more than establish churches, however. They established local Christian cultures. Yet while there is some understanding of what indigenous peoples sought to do when they assumed direction of churches founded by missionaries, there is very little idea of what indigenous peoples have sought to do when they take over local Christian cultures. But, if it is the case that, as Lamin Sanneh has argued, Christianity “stimulated the vernacular,” then the local Christian cultures built upon the vernacular, perhaps more so than the churches missions founded, are the true legacy of the missionary enterprise.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 76 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 591 - 610
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2007

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References

1. See Sanneh, Lamin, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989).Google Scholar The quotation is from page 52.

2. Crampton, E. P. T, Christianity in Northern Nigeria (London: G. Chapman, 1979Google Scholar is the one published survey of Christian mission life in Northern Nigeria. Perhaps the most influential treatment of missions and their cultural impact during the early years of the colonial era in Northern Nigeria is contained in Graham, Sonia, Government and Mission Education in Northern Nigeria 1900-1919, with special reference to the work ofHanns Vischer (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1966).Google ScholarBoer, Jan Harm, Missionary Messengers of Liberation in a Colonial Context: A Case Study of the Sudan United Mission (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1979)Google Scholar provides a systematic survey of the evangelical initiatives of one of the Protestant missions; Turaki, Yusufu, An Introduction to the History of the SIM/ECWA in Nigeria 1893-1993 (Jos, Nigeria: Challenge, 1993)Google Scholar provides a different, but still comparative, survey of another. Also worth consulting on the topic of Christian missions in colonial Northern Nigeria are Ayandele, E. A., “The Missionary Factor in Northern Nigeria, 1870-1914,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 3:3 (1966): 503-22Google Scholar; Kastfelt, Neils, “African Resistance to Colonialism,” Journal of Religion in Africa 8: (1976): 1-12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarUbah, C. N. looks at Christian evangelization from the Muslim perspective in his “Problems of Christian Missionaries in Muslim Emirates of Nigeria 1900-1928, Journal of African Studies 3:3 (1976): 351-71.Google ScholarBarnes, A. E. looks at relations between mission and government in his “Christianity and the Colonial State in Northern Nigeri 1900-1960,” in Nigeria in the Twentieth Century, ed. Falola, Toyin (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic, 2002).Google Scholar

3. See Hastings, Adrian, The Church in Africa 1450-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 546-60Google Scholar; Maxwell, David, “Decolonization,” in Missions and Empire, ed. Etherington, Norman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Porter, Andrew N., “War Colonialism, and the British Experience: The Redefinition of Christian Missionary Policy”, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 5:2 (1992): 277-81Google Scholar; and in general the essays in Stanley, Brian and Low, Alaine, ed., Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire (Grand Rapids Mich.: Erdmans, 2003).Google Scholar

4. See Maxwell, “Decolonization,” 291; Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450-1950, 551, 567; Porter, “War, Colonialism, and the British Experience,” 283.

5. As of 1927, for example, when a World Dominion survey was published, th two missions accounted for two-thirds of the missionaries in the region, and three-fifth of the mission stations: see Maxwell, J. Lowry, Nigeria: The Land, the People, and Christian Progress (London: World Dominion, 1927), especially 146.Google Scholar

6. Ogbu U. Kalu, “Passive Revolution and Its Saboteurs: African Christian Initiative in the Era of Decolonization, 1955-1975,” in Stanley and Low, Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire, 256.

7. Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450-1950, 453-61.

8. Kalu, “Passive Revolution and Its Saboteurs,” 250, 259.

9. Ibid., 251.

10. The main scholarly sources on the Middle Belt Movement are Sklar, Richard L.Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation (Princeton, NJ.: Princeto University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Sklar, Richard L. and Whitaker, C. S., African Politics and Problems in Development (Boulder, Colo.: L. Rienner, 1991)Google Scholar; Whitaker, C. S., The Politics of Tradition: Continuity and Change in Northern Nigeria, 1946-1966 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Dudley, Billy J., Parties and Politics in Northern Nigeria (London: Cass, 1968)Google Scholar; Niels, Kastfelt, Religion and Politics in Northern Nigeria: A Study in Middle Belt Christianity (London: British Academic, 1994)Google Scholar; Smith, M. G., “Kagor Political Developments,” Human Organization 19:3 (fall 1960): 137-49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. On the Richards Constitution and the progression of Nigeria toward independence in the 1950s in general, see Coleman, James S., Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 271-95.Google Scholar

12. As Dudley observed in a footnote, the area understood to make up the “Middl Belt” was open to some debate. According to UMBC documents, however, the area was composed of the following provinces: Kabba, Illorin, Niger, Benue, Plateau Adamawa, along with the southern regions of Zaria and Bauchi: see Dudley, Parties and Politics, 112-13, n. 80.

13. See Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 345-50; Dudley, Parties and Politics, 91-98

14. See the “Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Fears of Minoritie and the Means of Allaying Them” (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1958); Sklar, Nigerian Politcal Parties, 349-50.

15. SirSmith, Bryan Sharwood, Recollections of British Administration in the Cameroons and Northern Nigeria, 1921-1957: But always as friends (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1969), 333.Google Scholar

16. Ibid, 334.

17. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 345-46.

18. See the “Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Fears of Minoritie and the Means of Allaying Them”; Kastfelt, Religion and Politics, 74-75. Sharwood Smith, Recollections, 369-73, provides some background to the government approach to the issue.

19. Dudley, Parties and Politics, 92-93; Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 348.

20. Ibid., 345.

21. Ibid., 346.

22. Dudley, Parties and Politics, 91-94.

23. Ibid., 92.

24. Kastfelt, Religion and Politics in Nigeria, 65-124.

25. Ibid., 80.

26. Dudley, Parties and Politics, 91.

27. Ibid., 91.

28. See Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 348.

29. To the Dudley quote from Habib, just mentioned, may be added the identificatio by Sharwood-Smith of the Middle Belt Movement as a result of “Christian mission influence”: see Sharwood-Smith, Recollections, 332-33.

30. The Lightbearer 48 (1952): 49-50.

31. Ibid., 49.

32. The Lightbearer 46 (1950): 47.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Kastfelt, Religion and Politics in Nigeria, 60.

39. Ibid., 57.

40. Ibid., 42-43.

41. Ibid., 57-58.

42. See Barnes, A. E., “‘Evangelization Where It Is Not Wanted’: Colonial Administrators and Missionaries in Northern Nigeria during the First Third of the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Religion in Africa 25 N (1995): 412-41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 348-49; Dudley, Parties and Politics, 97-105 183-85.

44. See Ibid., 96-98.

45. See Peel, J. D. Y., Ijeshas and Nigerians: The Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom, 1890s-1970s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 175-96.Google Scholar

46. Ibid., 180.

47. Ibid., 173.

48. Kastfelt, Religion and Politics in Nigeria, 77-83.

49. See Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 232; and his “Nigerian Politics: The Ordeal of Chief Awolowo,” in Sklar and Whitaker, African Politics and Problems in Development, 109-51 especially 111-12; Kastfelt, Religion and Politics in Nigeria, 74.

50. Sklar, “Nigerian Politics,” 112-13.

51. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 233-35; Sklar, “Nigerian Politics,”112.

52. See Ayandele, “Missionary Factor,” 158; Barnes, “Evangelization Where It Is Not wanted,” 417-21.

53. Kastfelt, Religion and Politics in Nigeria, 59-60.

54. Ibid, 59.

55. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism, 212-13.

56. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 346, n. 39.

57. Ibid, 248.

58. For examples of the sentiments of Northern colonial administrators on this subject, see SirOrr, Charles, The Making of Northern Nigeria, 2nd ed. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965), 259-60Google Scholar; Temple, C. L., Native Races and Their Rulers, 2nd ed. (London: Cass, 1968), 215.Google Scholar For examples of the sentiments of missionaries, see Robinson, Canon Charles Henry, Hausaland, or, Fifteen Hundred Miles through the Central Soudan (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1896), 126Google Scholar; The Lightbearer 6 (1910): 90-91.

59. See, for example, the story of Yepwi, told in The Sudan Witness, the mission journal of the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM), the largest of the Christian missions in Norther Nigeria. Yepwi was among the original “mission boys” who attended the school at the mission station at Karu. A bright young man, he quickly mastered reading an writing in both his native Gbari and Hausa. He publicly professed his Christian faith and was persecuted for it by his family, fellow villagers, and the village chief. Yet Yepw “stood firm and endured it all.” Then “suddenly the chief altered his tactics.” Instead of condemning Yepwi for his faith, the chief praised him for his intellectual attainments The chief gave Yepwi a horse and promised him “wives, money, and honour” if he “stopped following the white man.” Yepwi listened and was seduced to the dar side. At the time the story was written (1925), Yepwi was “galadima” (second in command of his village. He was a “big man” with “five wives and many houses.” Yet he was also “far from the Lord.” Very often he was drunk, and to all appearances he was “utterly indifferent and hardened.” This is a story that could be read as an example of both denationalization and materialism: see The Sudan Witness (1925): 18.

60. See in particular Cary, 's Aissa Saved (London: E. Benn, 1932)Google Scholar; and The African Witch (New York: W. Morro, 1936)Google Scholar.

61. See Barnes, “Evangelization Where It Is Not Wanted,” 432-36.

62. See, for example, the comments of Roland Bingham, founder of the SIM, printe in the SIM's journal, The Evangelical Christian 15 (June 1919): 165-66.

63. Kastfelt, Religion and Politics in Nigeria, 54-56.

64. Ibid., 57.

65. Ibid., 56-60.

66. For the SUM, see The Lightbearer 39 (1943): 41; for the SIM, see The Sudan Witness 18 (April 1942): 4.

67. To use data drawn from the archives of the SIM, at the SIM Egbe mission station 29 Africans were employed in 1940; 63 as of 1951. At the Mission's Igbaja station in 1941, the number of paid African staff was 9. Eleven years later it was 27. See SR (Station Reports) 10 for Egbe; 14 for Igbaja, SIM Archives, Fort Mill, S.C.

68. See the series “Enlarged Horizons,” The Lightbearer 53 (1957): 108-9Google Scholar; 54 (1958) 12-13, 28-29.