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

Church and state

Comment

Community

Trauma

5 August 2025

5 min read

After Southport: how to communicate amid tragedy, rumour, and riot

Handling the media in the aftermath brings dread, discretion and dignity

Stuart Haynes

Stuart is communications director for the Diocese of Liverpool.

A media pack await a press conference in a street.

Media covering the Southport attacks.

The Emperor of Byzantium, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Working from home in the quiet town of Ormskirk, about four miles from Southport, the first I noticed was a cacophony of sirens accompanied by our local Facebook groups buzzing with speculation over what it was this time. The news started breaking. An incident in Southport, vague details at first but enough to start that feeling of unease.

Then the phone call and email. The local vicar and one of our Archdeacons seeking advice as inevitably the media would be looking for comment. I’ve taken a similar call many times over the 20 years I have worked with the church. It sets a mix of contradictory emotions. Selfishly you can’t help thinking there goes my plans for the day before you are sharply brought up to the knowledge that the reason for this is a tragedy for others.

Southport brought out a further emotion. When I was a student, I lived for a year close to the location of the stabbings. 30 years on and the suburban area I knew was seemingly unchanged. Yet everything was different.

The role of the press officer at this point involves navigating a tricky balance. You have a job to do, the journalists you deal with have a job to do. You are constantly fielding phone calls, jotting messages juggling time slots. You have a relentless barrage of people putting interview requests in and you want to ensure the right voices are heard and that those who represent aren’t worn out by interview upon interview.

Then you remember what caused the story in the first place. You think of the emergency services working hard to support those in need. Above all you think of the victims and the families – at that time not knowing how many or how serious. And the sense of gloom deepens as the rumours of how serious the situation spreads before you get word of a police conference fearing the worst before the worst gets confirmed.

At these times the mood amongst the media teams always feels strange. Acutely aware of the pain of the situation and sympathetic to what’s happened they can’t escape the job they have to do. I have seen this over many years mainly through the management of the press pens outside funerals at Liverpool Cathedral and churches across the region. You get to know some of the pack well, mainly and somewhat grimly reuniting at the next tragedy. They are massively co-operative with a strong sense of camaraderie, yet you can feel the pressure coming down to them from their news and picture desks. So, a sharing of resources and support occurs underpinned by a hint of journalistic competition.

The press officer’s role here is to feed the machine. It’s hungry. They have time to fill and very often, particularly so close to when the event happened, everyone is more speculative than informed. The machine needs feeding whatever and the church voice can be a calm voice of authority speaking the anxieties and wishes of the local community. However, we don’t want to be rent-a-voice, we are not helpful if we seem to be trying to grandstand over someone else’s grief. We need to show the compassion and love that our faith and Christian values teach us.

That became critically important on the second night when things turned ugly and the story was hijacked by rioting right wing mobs. Having been to the peaceful and respectful vigil on the afternoon I drove back past the scene of the stabbings on my way home. You could smell the tension in the air as people were converging on the streets exuding a purpose that did not seem like the sorrow from earlier that day.

The media aftermath for the church was then to support the efforts showing the community rebuilding whilst also calling for harmony, standing shoulder to shoulder with representatives from all faiths.

And on to the funerals.

There are many patterns to organising press coverage at a funeral. Usually, we need a pen to marshal the cameras in a way that enables them to get the pictures they need whilst maintaining a respectful, sympathetic distance. It feels there is a nigh on obligatory picture of the service order, my hand featuring in many of these shots. There is a lot of standing and waiting, clarifying the minutia of the service so the reporters can tell the story and capture the atmosphere.

Yet for me each funeral is different as I try to ensure the family’s wishes predominate. Southport was a case in point. Of the two funerals in Anglican churches (one victim was from a Roman Catholic family) one family wanted no coverage and my role was simply to make sure that wish was honoured. The other saw cameras in and around church and a full suite of reporters so we work hard with them to ensure respect. Mostly that involves a combination of setting consistent fair rules and supplying enough for them to tell the story. Journalists can cope with told they can’t do something provided their rivals are getting the same message. Lose the consistency you lose the pack as I experience outside Ken Dodd’s funeral when I had to scream at the press pack to get back in their pen before the cortege arrived.
I see this as a ministry. I have learnt techniques over the years, witnessed fights in graveyards, stood soaking waiting for the funeral to end and the coffin to leave so I can relax. Doing this is a privilege which spills over into the funerals I conduct as a priest. As do the learnings from those funerals that, in turn, inform my ministry. Get it right it becomes a fitting, respectful and dignified way for the wider community to say goodbye to a victim.

Then when it’s done we move on. The press pack to the next day’s story myself to the tasks from the routine job that I had to ditch. That’s easier for us. But the families and loved ones can’t easily move on from their pain and grief.

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