How Nigeria's Pentecostal Ministers became more powerful than the President

When the Europeans, first the Portuguese and then the British, took the land and its people, they came bearing the gift of salvation.

In one hand, there was the Royal Niger Company, the slave trade, guns, ethnic genocides and colonialism, in the other were missionaries, churches, schools and the Bible.

In his book “Violence in Nigeria: The crisis of religious politics and secular ideologies”, Toyin Falola quotes Jan H. Boer of the Sudan United Mission as saying, “Colonialism is a form of imperialism based on a divine mandate and designed to bring liberation — spiritual, cultural, economic and political — by sharing the blessings of the Christ-inspired civilization of the West with a people suffering under satanic oppression, ignorance and disease”

The Catholic and Anglican missionaries of those early days integrated into society and became both spiritual and community leaders. They offered advice, counselled the faithful and got a seat at the table when important decisions were made.

The churches were also important, partly as a representative of a higher authority, mostly for the amenities they provided. Almost every colonial church had a school, for instance.

But as the nation moved towards independence and the indigenous population began to find their own cultural and spiritual footing, their influence waned.

Pentecostalism in Nigeria drew from traditional modes of worship and these colonial Christian values and beliefs to create a hybrid that the citizens could connect to; an early fore-bearer of that movement was the Eternal Sacred Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim, founded by Moses Orimolade in 1925.

The first Pentecostal church in Nigeria came 16 years later. After a split from the Apostolic Church, a construction truck driver, Joseph Ayo Babalola, created the Christ Apostolic Church in 1941.

In the decades that followed, many other ministers heard the call to create new platforms or break from existing ministries. Some of Nigeria’s greatest churches were created in that time. The Redeemed Christian Church of God (styled, RCCG), founded in 1952, is one of them.

This period, on both sides of the push for independence, was in biblical terms, filled with milk and honey.

The Nigerian society was growing, but it was already robust enough that the new churches took on a role and image that was closer to the congregations.

Pentecostalism encourages personal relationships with God, and these churches drew nearer to build that bridge.

Then, 1966 and the military happened.

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After an initially promising period, albeit after a bloody civil war, immense instability and the power-hungry anarchism of successive administrations destroyed what trust and belief that the average Nigerian had in the state and in the institutions that support it.

The oil boom of the 1970s changed Nigeria in many regards. Across the country, a close-knit elite took advantage of the windfall and the luxurious fruits of such corruption began to manifest.

To the average Nigerian, it destroyed any belief in the fairness and justice of the system.

An excerpt from “Pentecostalism in Nigeria”, a research paper from Harvard Divinity School’s Religious Literacy project, says “On the one hand, this made life more difficult for the vast majority of people who increasingly turned to religious organizations to provide for their basic needs”.

Those basic needs were hope and trust. The government which ought to provide solutions had developed into a problem itself. The churches provided an optimistic alternative.

In the midst of crippling uncertainty and fear, hope is more valuable than nearly anything else.

The brutal, suffocating Abacha years, between 1993 and 1998, raised the stakes higher. As the quality of life worsened and freedom became a myth, more Nigerians turned to God, and the churches for hope and a permanent solution to the dictatorship.

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By the last years of his rule, Abacha’s death was the subject of much prayer and supplication.

“Given the terrible state of the country under Abacha, it is not surprising that during that time, Nigerians found God in a major way”, says Jide Olanrewaju, in his definitive documentary on the history of Nigeria.

“Even more significant is the disenchantment of the populace with the socioeconomic situation,“ says an excerpt from “Nigeria During the Abacha Years (1993–1998)”, a journal by Kunle Amuwo, Daniel C. Bach and Yann Lebeau.

“…, the seeming duplicity or complacency of the clergy of the two established religions have created a process of popular religious revivalism. Christian Pentecostals and Muslim fundamentalist and reformist groups have proliferated”, it reads.

As the attention and expectations of the populace shifted from the government to the churches, so did the power of any influence over them.

Events like Lekki ’98 showed just how much that power was worth.

The revival, which was hosted by the RCCG’s Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, filled the Lekki beach area and clogged the road so badly that Adeboye reportedly had to walk from his home in Surulere to the venue.

The churches had grown into bastions of influence and it was the men at the helm, the ministers, the general overseers and chief superintendents who embodied all of this power and expressed the authority.

Pentecostalism teaches that Christians show faith, an unexplainable belief in God regardless of what reality may suggest. Buoyed by cults of personality and the portrayal of ministers as the untouchable, anointed messengers of Heaven, that faith has been re-interpreted as a dogmatic loyalty to God, the church and the ministers who purpotedly speak in God's name.

Abacha died in 1998, and by the time Obasanjo was contesting for the highest office in the land in 1999, he needed the blessings and implied endorsement of these religious leaders to secure an important Christian vote.

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Thus began a trend that continues to this day where presidential and governorship aspirants visit these pentecostal “megachurches”, at events held in massive auditoriums to get the blessings of ministers like Adeboye, Oyedepo and more.

These auditoriums, or more specifically, the large congregations that they struggle to hold, are the core of the church’s strength.

In the early 2000s, a wave of revivals by foreign ministers like Reinhard Bonnke and Benny Hinn were a sort of international cosign of the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria.

Indigenous Pentecostal ministers took advantage of this association to reach new audiences at similar revivals - their congregations have since grown steadily, thanks to rapid expansion policies, such as RCCG’s Mission and Vision statement, which propose that there will be a member of the church in every family of the world.

To achieve this, the church plans to plant churches within five minutes walking distance in every city and town of developing countries and within five minutes driving distance in every city and town of developed countries.

In the last few decades, the biggest of these Pentecostal ministries have built their own communes; a series of self-sufficient towns that house thousands of the Church faithful, the headquarters of the church’s auxiliary institutions and arenas where massive monthly crusades and gatherings are held.

By far the largest of these is the RCCG’s Redemption Camp.

Located along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, it is home to its own small economy, sustained by power produced from gas turbines owned by the church.

The camp also has its own water treatment facility, transport system and union to match, medical and recreational facilities, security force and a complete set of educational institutions, from creche to the Redeemers University, all with the church’s “Dove” insignia emblazoned in clear sight.

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The influence and power of Nigerian Pentecostal ministers have also grown to an extent that is beyond populist analysis. In 2008, NewsWeek listed Pastor E.A Adeboye among its 50 most influential people in the world.

The growth of their congregations and the Nigerian need to find answers in the mystical and project their belief unto individuals suggest that there is still room for growth.

Nigeria’s presidents wield great political power but successive administrations have elevated good governance to the level of fantasy and reduced the goodwill of their office.

On the sidelines, Pentecostal leaders have assumed a higher authority, the more prominent of them like Adeboye are christening presidents a la the Prophet Samuel and, as ex-president Goodluck Jonathan so sadly learned in 2015, impliedly withdrawing their endorsements to devastating effect.

History and a culture of institutional ineptitude have taught the average Nigerian that the solution to his problems lies in God, and the ministers who offer a connection to that source are now worshipped like the gods themselves.

If there is any doubt about their influence, wait till the next general elections become important.