Scottish Missionaries in Central Nigeria

Chapter 12 Scottish Missionaries in Central Nigeria Musa A.B. Gaiya and Jordan S. Rengshwat In this study central Nigeria refers to the Christianised part of northern Nigeria—what was called the Middle Belt of Nigeria in the 1950s and is still referred to as such in present Nigeria’s socio-political rhetoric. The Middle Belt was created as a result of the Christian missionaries’ work in northern Nigeria, which began in the early 1900s. The area comprised of Adamawa, Southern Bauchi, Plateau,1 Southern Zaria,2 and Benue.3 This area was called the Bible Belt of the Northern Nigeria. This study focuses on Plateau and Southern Zaria. Missionary societies under consideration are the Sudan United Mission (sum), which worked in Plateau, and the Sudan Interior Mission (sim), which was dominant in the Southern Zaria area. Both missionary bodies had a number of Scottish missionaries. However, sim was a non-denominational mission, meaning that, once they were accepted into the mission, missionaries were expected to put aside their denominational convictions and apply themselves exclusively to evangelism. Since the nineteenth century, Africa has been a major recipient of Scottish missionaries. Notable are David Livingstone, the missionary explorer of Africa, a major exponent of the civilising impact of Christianity in Africa, and the implementer of Fowell Buxton’s theory that the slave trade in Africa would be extinguished through mission work and the introduction of free trade; Alexander Duff and James Chalmers, missionaries to India and New Guinea, respectively; Hope Waddell, of Calabar (South East of Nigeria), and Mary Slessor, who toiled in southern Nigeria as a missionary and a representative of the British government. Slessor is well known in Nigerian history as the coura- geous woman who stopped the notorious custom of killing twins. This study not only adds to the list of Scottish missionaries in Africa, but also argues that Scottish missionaries who worked among the Berom in Jos, Plateau State, and among the Kagoro in Southern Zaria, inspired a Christian nationalism that was directed at reversing the internal colonialism created by the British 1 Plateau was made up of present Plateau and Nassarawa states. 2 Today Christian nationalists prefer the term ‘Southern Kaduna’ in their struggle for independence from Zaria emirate. 3 Benue included groups such as the Tiv, Jukun, Idoma and Igala in present Taraba, Benue and Kogi states. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004276901_014 <UN> 264 Gaiya and Rengshwat administration in implementing Indirect Rule Policy. Influenced by their expe- rience in Scotland under English hegemony, these missionaries encouraged their converts to seek independence from the Hausa/Fulani overlords imposed on them by the British colonial authorities. Thus, the first nationalist movement created in the region under study was, strictly speaking, Christian, anti- Islam and opposed to Hausa/Fulani overlordship and exploitation. This might explain why the umbrella under which this Christian nationalism thrived was called the Non-Muslim League (later, the Middle Zone League and Middle Belt Movement). Three scholars have drawn similar conclusions in their study of this period. These are Niels Kastfelt,4 Paul Chunun Logams5 and recently, Nanyak Barko Goifa.6 All these scholars perceive the missionary influence in the early Christian nationalism in northern Nigeria; Kastfelt studied the role played by the Lutheran missionaries in the rise of Christian nationalism in former Adamawa Province (northeast of Nigeria) however, only Logams, using George Balandier’s and M.J. Dent’s works, was inspired by Scottish nationalism to study Christian nationalism in northern Nigeria under the umbrella of the Middle Belt Movement.7 But Logams did not restrict his study to Scottish missionaries or saw the influence of their political history to inspire their converts, albeit covertly, to struggle for autonomy from Muslim Hausa/Fulani hegemony, and he did not look at the consequences of religious politics, which has marred peace and social harmony in central Nigeria—and indeed, in northern Nigeria, as a whole. Although Goifa’s work makes a case that Christian identity in Southern Zaria was due mainly to the work of sim, his work lacks depth of analysis and dwells more on mission-related considerations. There are other very helpful works on Plateau and Southern Zaria (as the Christianised area in present Kaduna State was called) but did not treat Christian nationalism as a theme, such as Elizabeth Isichei’s extensive work on pre-colonial social history of the ethnic groups of Plateau;8 Yusufu Turaki’s work on the impact of Indirect Rule 4 Niels Kastfelt, Religion and Politics in Nigeria: A Study in Middle Belt Christianity, London: British Academic Press, 1994. 5 Paul Chunun Logams, The Middle Belt Movement in Nigerian Political Development: A Study in Political Identity 1949–1967, Abuja, Centre for Middle Belt Studies, 2004. 6 Nanyak Barko Goifa, “A Historical Study of Mission’s Approach to Culture and Evangelisation of Northern Nigeria: An Evaluation of Religion and Socio-Political work of the sim in Southern Zaria (Kaduna State), 1910 -1954” M. Phil Thesis, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, Oxford, 2009. 7 Logams, p. 11. 8 Elizabeth Isichei, Studies in the History of Plateau State, Nigeria, London: Macmillan, 1982. <UN>.

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