Christians in Nigeria comprise an estimated 49.3% of the population. Christians are dominant in the southern (south-east/south-south/South west and central region in Nigeria. According to the Pew Research Center, Nigeria has the largest Christian population of any country in Africa, with more than 80 million persons in Nigeria belonging to the church with various denominations. The majority of Christians in Nigeria are Protestant.
More than 90 million Nigerian belong to one church or another, there are thousands of denominations in Nigeria that are under CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria). The church believes in Jesus Christ as being the savior of the world.
The coming of the colonial masters brought about Christianity to Nigeria.
No doubt Christianity has impacted us so much both in our lives and the country at large.
Christianity Comparatively, followers of Jesus Christ (Christians) seem to live a better and happier life than any other religious group in the world.
Christianity is also the world’s most popular religion, it wouldn’t be so popular if it is not impacting the Nigerians and the world positively.
Educationally,Christianity helped eradicate illiteracy because they brought about the Formal Western Education in Nigeria and this was done because the missionaries figured the new converts need to read and understand the Bible on their own and today Western Formal Education is the best form of practice in our educational system.
Possibly, without Christianity, we would all be hunters and fishermen and remain crude in our level of development.
Socio-politically,Christianity impacted both Negatively and positively.
It did not just focus on evangelization but it gave an approach to human activity which included commerce, Christianity and civilization. A major point was the eradication of slavery in Nigeria. Christianity in actual sense promotes love and kindness as a code of morality for mankind; which has a positive effect on promoting peace among society. The moment we get these right, we can say audaciously that Christianity is impacting Nigerians positively
Christianity played a strategic role in eradicating such diabolic practices as; Human sacrifice, Slavery, Infanticide, Polygamy and so many more.
In developed nations of the world, things are moving well because they abide by this Golden Rule of conduct.
If Nigerians should also wake up to embrace the Good teachings and stop being the ‘hearers of the word only but the doers,’ Nigeria will become a Heaven for us all. And the positive impacts of Christianity will be seen in all ramifications.
I do not think that the Church is Nigeria’s problem at the moment. Nigeria’s problem is irresponsible leadership, bad governance and a conglomerate of masses who are not united to achieve a common purpose .When we are ready to ditch corruption and do things the right way, we would grow. Let’s leave the Church out of our mouths.
A country plagued by this level of injustice, abuse of public office, indiscipline, extra-judicial killing, impunity and all manner of vices demands sources of moral support for her citizens. The church is one of the reasons we haven’t had a second civil war.
There is no doubt that churches in Nigeria have played a tremendous role to build human capacity needed to pilot the affairs of the nation, generate a pool of leaders to reposition our political and economic growth and above empower the spiritual life of its people towards their creator. Even though there is a wide spread of social and economic ills in our body politics as a result of corruption, it magnitude and dimension would have been higher and disastrous. Just for the sake of the elect our nation would have been left in the hands of strangers who would have destroy us the more. Isaiah 1:9 Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. We are in the verge of dinosaur, with huge unemployment rate, the political and economic system has continued to failed us. To a large extent we are called failed state by countries we are far better and richer in both human and material resources. Schools are operating beyond the expected level with no evidence of improvement of life in the people. Our economy is in shamble and grossly mismanaged
. The apparatus of government is weak and getting weaker, as the nation is besetted by terrorism, insecurity intercommunal violence, and a countrywide crime wave. Nigeria is considered to be a country with a high level of crime, ranking 17th among the least peaceful countries in the world.
Major crimes in Nigeria include rape, kidnapping, murder, burglary, fraud, terrorism, robbery, cyber-crimes, bribery and corruption, money laundering and so on.
It is against this background we need to invite our churches to do the needful. We need to encourage churches to build industries that will absorb our unemployed graduates, offer small scale loans to help our youths to do small scale enterpreur and take over their schools to train sound doctrine that will promote morality,ethics and cultural values in our society. They can sponsor interested members to contest political positions. They can also set up welfare programs to the aged people. While they emback on intensive prayer to God to remove this siege from us. Nigerians are known to be peace-loving people but when they are surrounded by evil miscreants from another country. The church should embark on regular evangelism to bring more souls to Christ. We must not fail to be alert and keep watch of evil people around us.
We need to be strong and gallant to resist any form of attack from any source. No body will ever defend your right but God can through our committed prayers. The Bible says if the people that are called by my name can fast and pray l will turn to them and heal the land. Jeremiah 7; 3 says “Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.
We must amend our ways as a body of Christ to enable us overcome our enemies and enjoy our nation.Psalm 107:13 aptly says “Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses. We need to cry into the Lord and be united as one body of Christ. A United people achieve much but if we are disunited and unorganized, we are easy to become prey to the enemies. The church remains the only divine institution to reposition Nigeria in 21st century.