Article

Comment

Community

Development

27 February 2023

5 min read

Religion and prosperity: how Nigeria’s diaspora is changing the West

Superlatives may describe Nigeria, but it is vital to understand what drives its people, especially those abroad.

Chris Wadibia

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development.

Mushin Market in Lagos.

Omoeko Media, via Wikimedia Commons

Superpower superlatives

Nigeria is the economic and human capital giant of Africa. Nigeria has almost 100 million more people than Ethiopia, the country with the continent’s second largest population. Nigeria’s 2021 GDP of $440bn led the continent for the eighth consecutive year. Helped, no doubt by its oil production, the second biggest in Africa. Since gaining independence in 1960, the Nigerian economy has suffered from incessant fluctuations but its population has experienced consistent growth. As of today, Nigeria’s population of 211 million is about two-thirds the population of the United States’ 332 million. All living on sovereign territory one and a half times the size of Texas.

The oil curse

Spotlighting these statistics uncovers another side of Nigeria's place in ‘Giant of Africa’ discourses. With over 300 distinctive ethnic groups, it has one of Africa's highest levels of population density. Ethnic competition for control of state economic resources, mainly oil revenues, has evolved into a leading theme influencing Nigeria's postcolonial development. Nigeria first discovered its oil-harvesting potential in 1956. However, the oil curse, and the high-level corruption that characterises it, would not fully commandeer Nigerian governance until the concluding decades of the 20th century. Some have argued that the curse of corruption grew in these decades into a chief impediment preventing national development. Nigeria is equally blessed and cursed, and this curse affects how it behaves internally.

Transnationalism

High potential Nigeria is hobbled by a curse that also has significant effects internationally. Thanks to Nigeria's large diaspora, these effects impact the UK. It is therefore important to understand who this diaspora is and what it believes. Many have written about the relationship between corruption, transnationalismm, and capital flight in Nigeria; however, another, less researched case of trans-nationalisation has unfolded in recent Nigerian history that has relevance for global economics. Since the 1980s, many thousands of Nigerian Christians have emigrated abroad to the UK, USA, and beyond, regularly citing economic, political, and religious factors as influences behind their decision to leave.

This emigration takes with it a practice that has reshaped not only Nigeria but the destination countries. It has led to the dawning reality among people researching global Christianity that Christendom's geographical locus of power, in terms of total number of Christians and theological influence, is shifting away from the West to the Global South. The faith of the immigrants drives their emigration and results in a variety of economic and social impacts in their destination countries. So, it is vital to understand their faith and its practices. More than any other Christian denomination in Nigeria, the confluence of Christian spirituality, migration, and economics heavily informs the religiosity of Pentecostals, whose churches frequently send them out as missionaries in service of a highly ambitious vision to evangelise the entire non-Christian world.

What drives the diaspora?

Nigerian Pentecostals relocate to the UK emigrate with two main interests: evangelising Britons and building personal wealth. In recent decades, the prosperity gospel has emerged as the defining doctrine of Nigerian Pentecostalism, the country's most politically and economically dynamic denomination. The prosperity gospel lionizes wealth and its linchpin theological premise argues that God wants Christians to enjoy this-worldly lives characterised by material blessings and holistic success. Believers in the prosperity gospel understand material wealth as an important component of their spiritual inheritance and ardently strive to secure material prosperity for themselves and families.

The materially intoxicating nature of prosperity gospel sensibilities have spilled over into other denominations in Nigerian Christendom to the extent that many Nigerian Christians today believe that God wants them to enjoy a life marked by wealth and health. Correlations between belief in prosperity theology and increased individual wealth remain difficult to prove indisputably, but the prosperity gospel's way of inculcating in believers the desirability of material wealth certainly makes them more comfortable working to acquire it, whether in the UK or the USA or elsewhere.

Go global

With upwards of 1.3bn people of Black and African descent living worldwide, Nigerians account for over one out of every six Black and African individuals globally. The instilling of prosperity gospel-friendly values in the minds of globally mobile Nigerian Christians conditions the latter to contribute to the local economies of their new home countries.

Go West

Nigerian-Americans have grown into one of America's wealthiest migrant groups. For decades the typical Nigerian-American child has grown up aspiring to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or businessperson, and today Nigerians can be found in senior positions in America's highest-grossing industries. Increasingly, this dynamic applies to the UK.

Nigerians in the UK

Nigeria, once a British colony, enjoys membership in the commonwealth; this geopolitical affiliation makes it easier for Nigerians to relocate to the UK and secure British citizenship. Aware of what they perceive as the ongoing secularisation of the West, many of these Nigerian Christians move to the UK inspired by a vision to re-evangelise the motherland, and this vision has given rise to the emergence of what is sometimes called ‘reverse mission.’

A succession of military dictatorships from 1966 to 1999 compelled many Nigerians to flee Nigeria to the UK in search of a better life. As a result, approximately 250,000 Nigerians live in the UK. Nigerians have evolved into one of the UK's largest and most influential African migrant communities. A disproportionate level of popular and scholarly attention devoted to the presence of Nigerians in the UK focuses on how Nigerian elites continue to buy expensive properties in London and the appreciable number of Nigerian students enrolled at UK universities. However, the landscape of Nigerians living in the UK contains additional dimensions in need of analysis and one of the most under-discussed of these dimensions concerns the influence of Nigerian Christian values on UK economic life.

Economic influencers

Based in north London Brent Cross' district, Jesus House is one of the UK's largest and most popular Nigerian Pentecostal churches. Like many other churches in the UK, Jesus House has joined the Warm Welcome Campaign in an effort to provide warm spaces to members of its community suffering from excessive exposure to cold winter temperatures. Yet, long after winter passes, this warmth will continue playing a valuable role by helping thaw the keys opening the ostensibly frozen doors to the next generation of UK prosperity.

Like in the USA, Nigerians in the UK envision for themselves lives marked by material prosperity. This vision regularly inspires them to pursue lucrative jobs and engage in entrepreneurship. For many UK-based Nigerians, prosperity gospel sensibilities, reverse mission interests, and the aim to build a better life intersect in ways that have constructive, wide-reaching social and economic consequences for the UK.

Sure, the prosperity gospel has its critics and its problems, but viewed positively, it can provide a source of economic energy for countries like the UK.

Inspired by Christian devotion and the belief that despite transient seasons of difficulty, prosperity is a sign of divine favour, Nigerian Christians contribute to the UK economy every day in consistent, substantive, and innovative ways. In a time when homes across the UK remain far colder than they should be, the prosperity-friendly piety of the UK's many Nigerian Christians offers a source of Christian warmth that deserves to be recognised more widely than it is.

Article

Comment

Film & TV

Truth and Trust

14 November 2025

5 min read

Impartial journalism isn’t possible for the BBC – or anyone else

It’s time to give up the ghost and opt for transparency over impartiality

Lauren Windle

Lauren Windle is an author, journalist, presenter and public speaker.

The BBC newsroom.

BBC.

I wrote 3,000 words explaining the differences between a complementarian and egalitarian relationships – loosely these are the two categories that determine a couple’s position on male headship and female submission in a Christian marriage. I have my opinions, sure. But in this piece, I was neutral. I clearly laid out the arguments for and against each, explained the history, context and nuances, all to equip the reader to make their own mind up.

I proudly handed the piece to my editor highlighting the careful tightrope of neutrality I had walked. She hesitated: ‘Well, I guess. But it’s clear what position you take.’ I was crushed, all the delicate phrasing and open-handed descriptions and I was still as transparent as the Shard on window clean day.

No matter how hard we try to present balanced arguments, there is no such thing as unbiased reporting. Even when trying to be ‘fair’ in the way we present a story, we always bring our own perception of ‘fairness’ to the table. And without the wisdom of Solomon (in the cut-the-baby-in-half era), we’re not going to consistently get it right.

I’ve been a journalist for some years but I’ve never worked in an organisation that claims to be impartial, bar a week’s internship at Science in Action on BBC World Service. I have, however, worked for publications that don’t share my political views. And even with the mandate to write in ‘house style’ there are many subtle decisions a journalist can make to skew reporting towards their personal opinion.

Phrasing is everything. Am I saying they ‘protested’ or ‘rioted’? Is it ‘reform’ or a ‘crackdown’? Are they an ‘immigrant’, ‘asylum seeker’, ‘refugee’ or ‘expat’? Did she ‘splash around in her swimsuit’ or ‘flaunt her curves on the beach’? There is no neutral choice of words or phrasing. Every micro-decision a journalist makes is based, consciously or unconsciously, on the perspective that they have and are trying to impart on you.

Then there’s choosing which topics to write about in the first place, selecting sources to quote from and statistics to reference and deciding how to frame the headlines. With the vast body of data available online, you can always find a person or stat to back up your belief. None of this can be done without a hint of your own background, culture, and worldview.

It is through this lens – my belief in the fallacy of impartiality – that I’ve followed the latest fallout at the BBC. After an internal dossier was leaked, it came to light that a Panorama documentary called ‘Trump: A Second Chance?’ that was broadcast not long before 2024’s presidential election, had misleadingly edited a speech he made on January 6 2021. The speech was spliced in such a way as to suggest he had egged on the assault on the Capitol. Shamir Shah, the BBC chairman, acknowledged the fault and said that the editing ‘did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.’

The BBC has always been plagued by allegations that it is not living up to its Royal Charter legally requiring it to be impartial. Interestingly, there are many examples of these complaints coming in from both the left and right sides of the political spectrum. The term ‘impartiality’ in this context doesn’t mean stripping all viewpoint from its reporting, as the organisation acknowledges the impossibility of that task, but it does say that it strives for balance, fairness and due weight. This is a standard they fell short of in their reporting of Trump’s address.

In this, it is undeniably at fault. Even the most questionable of news outlets, that do publish quotes out of context, would acknowledge that knowingly editing or adapting quotes and footage to support their own agenda is totally unacceptable. Regardless of a reporter’s own opinion, readers and viewers want to hear a person speak in their own words.

The wider question this raises for me is: why we are still claiming any news outlet is impartial in the first place? There’s a sense of safety with both right- and left-wing media, that openly acknowledges its own agenda. If you pick up the Guardian, you understand that you are reading about the world from a socially liberal political stance while tuning into GB News where they champion British values and challenge ‘woke culture’ will bring you something very different.

I think the BBC as an institution is brilliant, important and necessary but not impartial. When people decry the reporting choices or phrasing of BBC reporting as biased, my response is always ‘what do you expect?’. There are important checks and balances, like rights of reply and offering opposing positions, that help round out a story, but they don’t strip it of opinion. I think it’s time to give up the ghost and opt for transparency over impartiality.

The honest response is to acknowledge that, like every other person who relays a story, the BBC cannot resist the siren call of opinion. To claim it can, when audiences can plainly see the inconsistencies across its platforms, is both disingenuous and outdated. Instead, perhaps they could work to a mission statement along these lines: ‘We are committed to fairness, accuracy, and transparency. We value robust reporting and careful fact checking. We recognise that complete neutrality is impossible, but we strive to reflect the world as truthfully and inclusively as we can.’ This transparency would at least free up 90 per cent of people who write in to BBC’s Point of View to complain about its reporting.

Years ago, I was in conversation with the deputy editor of one of the big tabloids when he said that, while he thought his paper was great, no one should use it as their sole source of news. I appreciate his transparency. I think if any of us only consume news from one outlet, even if that is the BBC, we are selling ourselves short. Our pursuit of and clamouring for ultimate truth is a God-given and spiritual desire, so the wise would vary their sources.

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