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

Language

Politics

27 June 2025

5 min read

Our public discourse needs responsible rhetoric before it is too late

The right turn of phrase can turn a nation, the wrong one can destroy

Tom Dove

Tom has a PhD in Theology and works as a hospital physician.

A crowd of people stand in the side steps of the Lincoln Memorial

Easter services, Lincoln Memorial.

George Pflueger, via Unspash.

When was the last time a brilliant piece of rhetoric made the headlines?

“Empty rhetoric.”

“Form over function.”

“Sloganeering.”

These—and other accolades—are stock trade when it comes to the art of denouncing public discourse. Red flags are rightly waved in the face of baseless claims and insincere promises. Scroll through a news reel; open a newspaper: language far stronger in style than in substance is not hard to find.

Nowadays we are sensitive to these kinds of abuses of public platforms. When Donald Trump speaks of the ‘Great Big Beautiful Bill’ or Elon Musk of the ‘Big Ugly Bill’ we know the cogs at BBC Verify are likely to be turning. Fact-checking is an established trade.

Sometimes political turns of phrase are just careless, inadequately thought through. Granted, a politician’s public address is often put together at a pace. Time is so remarkably tight that phrasing and formulations are not interrogated as fully as they might be. (Krish Kandiah recently picked up the Prime Minister’s “island of strangers” line and its unfortunate resonance)

But of course, the critiques I’ve listed above are themselves sharply rhetorical. They are punchy. Not drawn-out logical deductions. They aim to make us sit upright and win us over. Or move us to a course of action.

So: is rhetoric the problem? No. Its misuse is the problem. This isn’t always clear. And it’s the reason why simply decrying “rhetoric” won’t get us very far.

I am sympathetic to the suspicion. When efficiency and pragmatism tower high among the canons of public discourse, it is easier to trade in polarising x versus y expressions. Being guarded in the face of such potent idiom is understandable.

And yet the most remarkable public discourses in human history have been rich in rhetoric.

Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial: “I have a dream.”

Churchill in the House of Commons: “we shall fight them on the beaches.”

Lincoln’s Gettysburg address: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

All these speakers knew that bare understanding doesn’t typically move people to action. An impassioned speech, a plea to respond, or beautifully woven prose often serve as the tipping point for social engagement.

Which leads me to wonder, what if a suspicion of smart speech-making ends up stunting social engagement, rather than fostering it? Perhaps political discourse today has gone too far; perhaps rhetoric is beyond repair. And yet: abuse doesn’t mean there isn’t proper use. There is a better way.

When persuasive powers are uncoupled from sound argument, then rhetoric obscures understanding and has become irresponsible.

In the classical era, training in rhetoric was a prominent feature of an education. You might say it was the way to avoid the charge: “All substance, no style”. It was about turning a sound argument into an art form. For Aristotle, rhetoric was about making use of the tools of persuasion—substance with style. But skill in persuasion was not a virtue of itself; it never stood alone. As Roger Standing has reminded us, “the function of rhetorical skills was not to persuade in and of themselves.” Indeed, training in rhetoric was training in responsibility.

In his classic 1950s text Ethics of Rhetoric, Richard Weaver put his finger on this. He highlighted that “rhetoric passes from mere scientific demonstration of an idea to its relation to prudential conduct.” True rhetoric, then, is this: the art of lighting up the path that leads from sound logic to good action.

Today, it seems that when it comes to the rules of rhetoric, communicators are answerable to polls and popularity. These ends justify the means, which makes fancy formulations fair game. If style secures votes, then it’s a good job done. But this means the communicator has no real accountability for his or her language. Pragmatism is in the driving seat. In a sense, responsibility has been handed over to the hearer.

This is problematic. When persuasive powers are uncoupled from sound argument, then rhetoric obscures understanding and has become irresponsible. Language is no longer illuminating, but misleading. It is trading on falsehood, or perhaps half-truths, instead of magnifying what is true for the sake of what is good.

Take an example. In the recent parliamentary debate over amendments to the assisted dying bill, the proceedings opened with the claim that “if we do not vote to change the law, we are essentially saying that the status quo is acceptable.” I don’t for a moment doubt the good intent in this claim—securing the most compassionate care possible for terminally ill adults. But let it be said: no, those who do not advocate assisted dying are not “essentially” saying this. This claim is a non sequitur: the conclusion does not follow the premise. It is logically unsound.

Like many tools, the art of persuasion can be wielded carelessly; sometimes maliciously. But rhetoric-free public discourse would make for a colourless and lifeless thing indeed. What we need now is rhetoric that is responsible—responsible to what is true and responsible to good outcomes. These should not be split; as soon as they are, speech-making becomes sterile or hollow. I recently heard the neat phrase: “Some people reach your mind by going through the heart, and some people reach your heart by going through your mind.” Yes, as the Christian faith has always maintained: mind and heart belong together. Give us words that awaken both, like those once spoken by that obscure wandering rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, in one of the most studied and penetrating speeches in human history:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

I pray for public discourse brimming with both substance and style. It might help lead us to better things.

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