Category: Religion
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Olubunmi Okogie; Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and Archbishop of the Lagos Archdiocese. In the home front, Okogie played the role of a Christian leader and activist. In May 1990, he raised the alarm over moves by the government of Ibrahim Babangida committing Nigeria, a secular state into joining the controversial Organization of Islamic…
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Ogunwande Abimbola; History professor, university administrator, and Ifa diviner born in the town of Oyo in 1936. Two years after his tenure as Vice Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University Abimbola became Majority Leader of the Nigerian Senate. For two years, he served as Special Adviser on Cultural Affairs and Traditional Matters to President Obasanjo.…
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The Apostolic Church, founded between the years 1904 and 1905, the church had had branches over Nigeria, U.S.A., France, and the U.K., since the early 1940s. The Apostolic Church is one of the oldest Pentecostal churches in Nigeria with membership, concentrated in Akwa Ibom and the south west, exceeding a million. An ambitious 100,000 capacity…
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Victor Oladokun; Broadcaster of the Christian Broadcasting Network known for his acclaimed television production, Turning Point, was born 1958 in England to an English mother and a father who hailed from Ondo town. Being a first child, Victor’s father sent him to school in his hometown to learn about his origin. It was this episode,…
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Apotheosis is the promotion of an individual to a godlike status. The term in Nigerian discourses is dominantly used in religion and in politics to denote respectively, the divinization of a hero, leader, or person acclaimed to possess spiritual power, and public office holder who enjoys large following in life and in death, hence having…
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J.B. Wood was the 19th Century Anglican Missionary to Nigeria and author of works on Yoruba grammar and literature whose History of Lagos up to 1861 was the first roundly chronicled story of the Nigerian coastal state. J.B. Wood, born in Yorkshire was posted as a missionary of the Church Mission Society to Abeokuta in…
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Charles Phillips was the 19th Century Head of the Church Missionary Society in Ondo, whose parents were Yoruba Sierra Leonean returnee. At Ijaiye Charles’s father, known by same name, was a church catechist. Charles Phillip, born in 1847 to Egba parents is remembered for his effort in negotiating a truce as an emissary of the…
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Igbe is a monotheist religion existing among the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria. It was founded by Ubiesha Etarakpo, a mystic from Kokori in Delta State. Precepts of this movement, which has been argued by scholars to be non-syncretic, is claimed to be in the service of Owheya, called the supreme divine being. For lack…
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Ubiesha Etarakpo of Kokori was the founder of the Igbe religion, a monotheist expression of faith that gained considerable followership among the Urhobo people of Nigeria from the 19th Century. As a trader of bangles made of elephant tusks, Ubiesha travelled to many parts of the Benin Empire, but after suffering an ill heath took…
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William Dappa Pepple was the king of Bonny, between 1835 and 1866, who called the Christian faith in 1864 to Bonny, thereby pioneering the Niger Delta pastorate of the Anglican Church. Born in 1817 in a long lineage of Bonny kings, in a dynasty that was started in the late 17th Century by Perekule, a…