After the failure of the first attempt to plant Christianity in Nigeria [in the sixteenth and seventh centuries], a failure, which, as we have already pointed out, was largely due to its connection with the [Portuguese] slave trade, it was significant and fitting that the second attempt which finally succeeded should be a concomitant of the abolitionist movement. Since by the end of the eighteenth century when the abolitionist movement started, Western Christianity was already a divided Christianity, divided into Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Since Protestant countries, notably Britain, initiated and championed the campaign to end the slave trade, it was Protestant Christianity which led the way when the Faith was reintroduced to the Itsekiri and their neighbours, the Urhobo.
During one of three expeditions -- in 1841, 1854, and 1857 -- Samuel Ajayi Crowther sought to introduce the Christian faith to Okwagbe people who belong to the Urhobo ethnic group. He made an attempt to live on the Western bank of the River Niger. We are told in Christian oral tradition of the Urhobo that the Okwagbe people rejected Crowther and his message which he claimed to have brought from God. The Okwagbe could not conceive how a man could claim to bring good news from Oghene (Urhobo word for God), who is often identified with the sky. They were more interested in trade than in that type of good news which seemed to them a fairy tale.
Ethical Demands or Cultural Pressures?
Polygamists were required to send away all their wives but one if they were to be baptised members of the Church; and the converts were not expected to pay any form of respect or homage to their ancestors, the cult of which they had cherished from the beginning. The cult was indeed ingrained in their way of life. They were expected to refrain from participating in annual and traditional festivals, which were generally connected with the ancestral cults, and in which the traditional culture of the Itsekiri, Urhobo, and Isoko appeared in bold relief. If converts were denied participation in traditional festivals, they were also excluded from taking traditional chieftaincy titles; they could not circumcise their daughters the way the Urhobo and Isoko had always done. All these prohibitions had the effect of discouraging Church attendance. Thus, though many of the first converts were happy they were healed or released from their respective Ukoedjo,yet they found all that they had to give up in order to continue to be Christians too high a price to pay. This was basically why Church attendance dropped. To say this is not to suggest that the new faith was not taking root. It did, in fact, spread, and, although in times of crises there were back-sliders, the Church members grew over the years.
Many of those who embraced Christianity did so because of a desire to be free to eat food they could not eat before conversion.
It was for this reason that Christianity in Urhoboland was initially known as Orugbegwa -- that which defies tabu. About 1911, Mr. Oluku Adjarho, from Ekiugbo, also of Ughelli, brought the Christian faith from Yorubaland where he had been sojourning. Thus, Ekiugbo also became another sub-centre to which people flocked to enlist in the faith.
Because Oluku was adroit in the Yoruba language, he read the Bible and taught the enquirers. Thus, between 1901 when Bishop Johnson first visited Warri, Sapele and Benin, and 1914 when World War I broke out, Christianity spread by leaps and bounds among the Urhobo and the Isoko and, to some degree also, among the Itsekiri.
In the case of Isoko, apart from those places from where people came to Urhoboland to enlist in the new faith, there were other towns which received Christianity from a different source. A man of the name Utuedon, who was said to be a relation of Dogho Numa of the Itsekiri, introduced Christianity to Uzere in 1909 when he was posted there as a court clerk. He was a convert of Bishop Johnson. He held services in a court hall, services from which women were excluded.
Idiots! Now the divide and conquer comes into part. Muslims kill Christians and Christians kill the traditionals. NIGERIA IS A COLONY OF ARABS AND EUROPEANS
WHOEVER CONTROLS YOUR GOD CONTROLS YOU!
