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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.

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3 June 2025

5 min read

Race across the world: you can go fast and go far

Forget the tight travel connections; it’s the human ones that enthral us.

Lauren Westwood

Lauren writes on faith, community, and anything else that compels her to open the Notes app.

Contestants in Race Across the world stand in front of neon-lit Chinese street scene

Ready to race.

BBC.

After years of peer pressure, my husband and I have joined the bandwagon and become Race Across the World evangelists. The BBC series, currently in its fifth season, follows five competing duos on an expedition between far-flung locations with limited resources and no forward planning.

Viewers love the show wherever they are in the world. In America, The Amazing Race, which has a similar format, is now on its 38th series.

‘No flights, no phones,’ boast the rules – but Race Across the World is a far cry from retreating to simpler times before smart devices and online banking, nor does it shy away from the complexities of modern life. Though there is a cash prize, the format of Race Across the World prioritises connection over competition. Each episode is a picture of messy, frantic humanity and examines how we cope in an environment where all we really have is each other.

The challenge is real. In the current series, the couples trek across China, Nepal and India, the start and end checkpoints spanning more than 14,000km. This cohort is an eclectic mix: two sets of slightly estranged siblings, teenage sweethearts from Wales, former spouses and a mother and son. Their vulnerabilities, as well as their triumphs, take prominence. In their conversation and in confessional, each person demonstrates a remarkable willingness to face the hard stuff of life with resilience, tenacity and enough convivial spirit to please the production team.

This emotional depth maps the physical and logistical demands of the race, as the viewer follows the pairs’ fast-paced journeys, stopping occasionally to enjoy some wonderful view amid countless train stations and overnight busses.

My sympathy derives from a belief that I would fare horrendously as a contestant – I think my excellently organised, exceedingly patient husband would flat-out refuse to compete with me. But the wider response to Race Across the World is one of empathy. Unlike similar shows, we are not called to blindly favour for the frontrunner, but to enjoy spending time with and bearing the burdens of all. We feel every frustration of the missed shuttle that just departed. When the ferry disembarks late due to poor weather, our response is not to scoff, but to share, in some small way, their lament. As their successes and failures are magnified, so is our compassion, willing them not to get lost in comparison’s snare but to keep moving forward.

Race Across the World exhibits the reality of community, speaks to the ache of life’s unpredictable nature, and extends grace for struggling humanity. We learn, alongside those racing, that the point is not always to fix our frustrations, but in being able to sit with them, to acknowledge disappointment rather than dismiss it, and to allow setbacks to spur us onto the next step. Sometimes, things get hard and we acutely feel that a situation is beyond our control. What have we then? Still, each other. Still, communion. Still, God.

Most of the time, the competitors’ issue does not disappear; they arrive at the checkpoint 24 hours late, they board the wrong train, the persistent typhoon ruins their chance of first place. But this hardship renews their strength and determination, promoting the notion that while suffering is never easy, it somehow shapes us. We endure and, in that endurance, we are refined and strengthened in ways we never thought possible. In the testing of our own endurance (or lack of), it turns out that some things actually are immovable.

This resilience permeates to the heart of who we are, forming us into people who can carry disappointment and hope simultaneously. It is an unwavering, defiant hope that finds us and never leaves us stranded. From this new position, fresh possibilities arise out of a deeper satisfaction, a greater victory, than found in being first place. This hope is rooted in something deeper, and it cries from the other side of difficulty: ‘Here I am, not lost.’

In his poem, Vow, Roger McGough reminds us that when,

Things seem to go from bad to worse,

They also go from bad to better …

Trains run on time,

Hurricanes run out of breath, floods subside,

And toast lands jam-side-up.’

It speaks to how the relatively small disappointments help us cope with the bigger stuff of life, the stuff we feel we will not emerge from. In the gritty, heavy, unfair stuff of life, we appreciate the weight of the enduring hope we possess, manifested in the belief that things not only can, but will go from bad to better. This is not a fragile optimism, but a fortitude and faith that sees the world as it is yet maintains that good and better is possible.

In the same way, Race Across the World urges us to consider what we can handle – not in our own strength, but in community, in reliance on another. Though our complex, strained humanity may attempt to deter us, life’s hardships are eased when shared, whether on a televised journey or from our sofas. We are strengthened in, by and through devoted community. In keeping pace with another – slowing down or rushing to keep up – we are mutually inconvenienced, and that is a source of beautiful fellowship. In letting go of the things that enslave us to self – ambition, insecurity, pride – we encounter the gift of each other, and give life to love that serves. We commit to community; we choose connection over competition.

The saying goes, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’ In Race Across the World, significant effort is understandably made by competitors to go fast and to go far, to place first and take home the cash prize. But the viewer’s delight is not so much in seeing the winning duo cross the finish line, as in witnessing the journey of two muddling through, sharing the load, bearing burdens and multiplying joys.

In our lives, too, the road can be unpredictable, full of detours, missed buses and, yes, a few painfully overpriced cabs. Yet it is in the community of fellow travellers we learn the worth of endurance, the refining possibility of suffering, and the hope that is cultivated in its place.

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