Christianity in Nigeria
Encyclopedia
Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

is a major religion in Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

accounting for about 50% of the population. Based on a 2003
Nigerian Religious and Demographic survey, Christians comprised 48.2% of the Nigerian population. Christians are dominant in the southern and central
Middle Belt
The Middle Belt is a human geographical term designating the region of central Nigeria populated largely by minority ethnic groups and stretching across the country longitudinally. The Middle Belt is indeterminate in that it lacks designated "borders" and is charactized by a heterogeneity and...

 region in Nigeria. Nigeria has the largest Christian population compared to any country with Christians in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 with more than 70 million persons in Nigeria belonging to the church with various denominations.

Since the introduction of Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...

 penal law in some of the Northern states
Northern Nigeria
Northern Nigeria is a geographical region of Nigeria. It is more arid and less densely populated than the south. The people are largely Muslim, and many are Hausa...

, violence between Christians and Muslims has increased.
Christianity is growing fast in Nigeria and according to the 1963 census, only 35% of the population at the time were Christian as compared to around 50% today.

The Catholic Church in Nigeria

The Catholic church being the largest Christian body in the world also has a huge and growing following in Nigeria. In 2005, there were an estimated 19 million baptised Catholics in Nigeria. The recent Annuario Pontificio lists 25 million.
The Archdioceses of the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 are: Abuja, Benin City
Benin City
Benin City, is a city and the capital of Edo State in southern Nigeria. It is a city approximately twenty-five miles north of the Benin River. It is situated 200 miles by road east of Lagos...

, Calabar
Calabar
Calabar is a city in Cross River State, southeastern Nigeria. The original name for Calabar was Atakpa, from the Jukun language....

, Ibadan
Ibadan
Ibadan is the capital city of Oyo State and the third largest metropolitan area in Nigeria, after Lagos and Kano, with a population of 1,338,659 according to the 2006 census. Ibadan is also the largest metropolitan geographical area...

, Jos, Kaduna
Kaduna
Kaduna is the state capital of Kaduna State in north-central Nigeria. The city, located on the Kaduna River, is a trade center and a major transportation hub for the surrounding agricultural areas with its rail and road junction. The population of Kaduna is at 760,084 as of the 2006 Nigerian census...

, Lagos, Onitsha
Onitsha
Onitsha is a city, a commercial, educational, and religious center and river port on the eastern bank of the Niger river in Anambra State, southeastern Nigeria....

 and Owerri
Owerri
Owerri is the capital of Imo State in Nigeria, set in the heart of the Igboland. Owerri consists of three Local Govern Areas including Owerri Municipal, Owerri North and Owerri West, it has an estimated population of about 400,000 as of 2006...

.
It has about 19 million members in Nigeria.
Cardinal Francis Arinze is a Roman Catholic Cardinal from Nigeria.

The National Church, Abuja


The National Church of Nigeria
National Church of Nigeria
The National Church of Nigeria is the primary Christian place of worship in Nigeria, a country with a substantial Christian population . It is located in Abuja, the capital city...

 (previously known as the Nigerian Ecumenical Centre and officially known as the National Christian Centre) is a non-denominational cathedral of the Christian Association of Nigeria
Christian Association of Nigeria
The Christian Association of Nigeria is an umbrella organization containing numerous Christian denominations in Nigeria.-Leadership:Ayo Oritsejafor, Senior Pastor of Word of Life Bible Church,is the President and Archbishop Daniel Okoh, President of the Organisation of African Instituted Churches,...

, the umbrella body of all of Nigeria's Christian churches.The church is located in Abuja
Abuja
Abuja is the capital city of Nigeria. It is located in the centre of Nigeria, within the Federal Capital Territory . Abuja is a planned city, and was built mainly in the 1980s. It officially became Nigeria's capital on 12 December 1991, replacing Lagos...

.

Church of Nigeria

The ecclesiastical provinces of the Church of Nigeria
Church of Nigeria
The Church of Nigeria is the Anglican church in Nigeria. It is the second-largest province in the Anglican Communion, as measured by baptized membership, after the Church of England. It gives its current membership as "over 18 million", out of a total Nigerian population of 140 million.Since 2002...

 are Lagos, Ibadan, Ondo, Edo, The Niger, Niger Delta, Owerri, Abuja, Kaduna and Jos. Its primate is Nicholas Dikeriehi Orogodo Okoh. The Church of Nigeria has about 17 million members.

Other denominations

The Nigerian Baptist Convention
Nigerian Baptist Convention
The Nigerian Baptist Convention is the second largest Baptist convention affiliating with the Baptist World Alliance, and the third largest in the world after the Southern Baptist Convention, USA, and National Baptist Convention, USA...

 has about 4 million baptized members.
form approximately 0.2% of the population. In 1970, 87,000 Jehovah's Witnesses were present in Nigeria, which grew to more than 313,000 by 2007.
In 2001 the highest court of Nigeria ruled that people have the right to object against blood transfusion
Blood transfusion
Blood transfusion is the process of receiving blood products into one's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used in a variety of medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood...

.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also has a growing presence within Nigeria. As of 2009, the church claims 93,532 members in the country and has established 289 congregations.

Anti-Christian violence by Muslims

Relations with Muslims have been strained, killings of Christians have been rampant since at least 1999, The 2010 Jos riots
2010 Jos riots
The 2010 Jos riots were clashes between Muslim and Christian ethnic groups in central Nigeria near the city of Jos. The area has been plagued by violence for the past twenty years motivated by multiple factors. The clashes have been characterized as "religious violence" by many news sources,...

 saw clashes between Muslim herders against Christian farmers near the volatile city of Jos
Jos
Jos is a city in the Middle Belt of Nigeria.The city has a population of about 1.5 million residents. Popularly called "J-town" or "Jesus Our Saviour" by the residents, it is the administrative capital of Plateau State....

, resulting in hundreds of casualties. Officials estimated that 500 people were massacred in night-time raids by rampaging Muslim gangs.

The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) threatened to sue Nigeria for (in their words) “the mindless killing of Christians by a Muslim fundamentalist sect – Boko Haram
Boko Haram
Boko Haram is a Nigerian Islamist group that seeks the imposition of Shariah law throughout the whole of Nigeria. The group presently has an undefined structure and chain of command...

.” from a Christian group: "For too long, the Christian Community had kept quiet, hoping that one day reason will prevail and the state chief executives will on their own compensate the victims and rebuild their demolished churches and homes."

In March 2010 clashes killed at least 200 people, most of them Christians. In similar clashes in 2008, more than 300 were killed.
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