8 - The Africanization of Western Civilization, 1930–60

Summary

Educational developments during the period 1930–45 turned the tide in the introduction of Western civilization in Northern Nigeria. Starting during this period and continuing to the time of independence, European social and cultural forms became progressively more entrenched in the region. This chapter will identify and discuss some of the attributes of the version of Western civilization brought into existence in the North during the second half of the colonial era.

The cultural conduit that evolved during the 1920s and 1930s allowed knowledge of Western things to go from Europeans to their African associates and from these African associates to other Africans. By the 1930s, in fact, it was possible for an African to learn a good deal about Europeans and their ways without ever having to chat with a European face-to-face. The knowledge could be acquired in a chain that stretched from Africans who lived within European enclaves to the frontiers of cultural contact in the “bush.” Over the second half of the colonial era, this conduit grew both broader and longer as more Africans went to school and carried their learning deeper into remote regions.

Toward an African Church: The SIM and African Evangelism

A colonial administrator in Northern Nigeria once made a comment to the effect that missionaries were primarily concerned with statistics. Would that this were true! Most missionaries had as little as possible to do with record keeping. They were in Africa to save souls, not keep records. There are actually very few consistent series of data available concerning the missionary effort in colonial Northern Nigeria. During the second half of the colonial era, the one great exception to the rule was the SIM. Starting in 1940, the SIM required the missionaries in charge of stations to fill out and send in standardized statistical reports on a quarterly and annual basis. Even with the standardized form, there remained confusion among missionaries about what they were supposed to be counting. Moreover, data from outstations often got lost or simply was not incorporated into the totals. Lastly, in 1956 the SIM gave way to the Evangelical Churches of West Africa (ECWA), an institutional transformation that caused even greater confusion in record keeping since missionaries did not know which activities should continue to be counted for the SIM and which should be tabulated for the ECWA.