The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Middle Belt of Nigeria

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just organized a district in Ilorin, in Kwara State. This is a move into more traditionally Muslim areas of Nigeria, although less so than Jos and Abuja. Those two cities have large populations from the south due to mining and government respectively.

There are also some branches in the north in more traditionally Muslim areas. Still Ilorin is probably the first place to get a district that was a base of one of the Emirates in the Sokoto Caliphate. It was also part of the British Protectorate of Northern Nigeria before the unification of 1908, which some call the mistake of 1908, which gave us the modern, culturally bifurcated country of Nigeria.

The Church has had a branch in Ilorin since 1992, but didn't get a second branch there until 2016. It was long part of the Enugu Mission, after the 1992-1993 plan to have a mission based out of Ilorin was decided to not be a worthwhile use of mission resources.

Ilorin is now in the newly formed Ibadan Mission. I am not sure if prior to July it was in the Enugu Mission or the Lagos Mission. Enugu was where the Mabeys and Cannons lived on their mission to Nigeria in 1978-1979. Although unlike places further south there were no pre-existing believers, they did convert many Christians in that city.

However Ilorin is not Muslin at the same level of northeast Nigeria. There is not Sharia law there. Nor does it have as deep Muslim roots as the northwest in places like Kano.

Christian missionaries did not come to Ilorin until about 1905, although there were unsuccessful attempts earlier. However in the 1920s indigenous Christian Churches sprang up in the area. The exact balance of Christians and Muslims I have not yet learned. Ilorin has long been a place of many ethnic groups. The largest, the Yoruba, who dominate the whole of south-west Nigeria from Lagos north, are majority Muslim but with noticeable numbers of Christians. The Hausa, Nupe and Falani among other groups are thought to be almost all Muslim. However there have also been migrations from the basically all Christian south-east of Nigeria. Thus, religious plurality exists and better for LDS growth, it often exists in Churches that embrace the gifts of the spirit and notions of personal revelation through dreams.

Last year there were similar growth anniversaries of forming districts in the eastern parts of Nigeria's middle belt. This area in the time around 2000 saw some of the worst inter-communal violence in Nigeria. The violence has since moved north, where Boko Haram has more often attacked more moderate Muslims, instead of the Christian/Muslim fighting in the middle belt area. I hope the Church continues to grow in the middle belt. Still, there are large swaths in the southern third of Nigeria of places that are not yet part of a branch or ward. Akwa Ibom has a lot of rural presence of the Church, this is the area where many of the pre-1978 congregations waiting on the misisonaries were. However even in Cross River State, that included Akwa Ibom in 1978 and thus the Cross River district was the first one formed in Nigeria, even in Cross River State the northern part of the state  there are just two branches, with boundaries in theory stretching 30 miles or more out of the location city, but probably much of the area still yet unreached.

On the other hand, the area between Calabar and the Cameroon border, is assigned to the mission branch. So there is a lot of potential for growth in much of Nigeria.