AN APPRAISAL OF THE EX-SLAVES FACTOR IN THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY IN NIGERIA, 1841-1900

Abstract

The nineteenth century Christian missionary enterprise in Nigeria was very successful compared to the first missionary enterprise carried out by the Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries. It was between the 14th and the 17th centuries. At first, the indigenous Nigerians people resisted the missionaries but when the missionaries joined the ex-slaves who have been converted to Christianity in their missionary adventures, they recorded outstanding success. For example the encounter between Obi Ossai of Aboh land and Simon Jonas, a liberated slave from Sierra Leone of Igbo parentage who belonged to the team of Church Missionary Society, proved to the European Christian missionaries that partnership with the ex-slaves will yield tremendous results. Hence, they formed a team with the ex-slaves in missionary enterprise in Nigeria. The missionaries partnered with the ex-slaves in taking the gospel to interior areas, they served as interpreters between the indigenous people and foreign missionaries, they encouraged the missionaries to translate the Bible to indigenous languages and also played vital role in the process, to establish schools, hospitals as well to offer humanitarian services to the people. They trained the indigenous converts as Catechists, teachers, court clerks and so on. The ex-slaves were very resourceful to the spread of Christianity in Nigeria. Most of the existing literature on history of Christianity in Nigeria seem to be focused on the missionary enterprise without vividly capturing the roles of ex-slaves in spreading the gospel in Nigeria. Furthermore, Christian missionary enterprise in Nigeria appears to be majorly seen by historians from the perspective of the general works carried out by various Christian missionary bodies, without looking inwards to identify the efforts of Nigerian exslaves in evangelizing the nation. This is the gap which this research work intends to fill. Therefore, the study is focused on pin pointing the role of ex-slaves in evangelizing Nigeria. The study relies on secondary sources of data collection which includes; mainline books, journals, book of readings and so forth. The study finds out that ex-slaves were of significant relevance in spreading Christianity in Nigeria.