| The written history of Christianity in Africa has long focused on the activities of the missionaries. When attention was given to Africans, the focus was on those Church leaders involved in the nationalist movements.;This project reveals that the new African leaders faced various difficulties that inhibited their initiatives. These problems included lack of administrative skills and enough qualified workers, disunity among workers and the new leaders, ethnicism, missionary overlordship, certain Church policies that contradicted with Western Nigerians cultural practices, and above all financial limitations. In spite of all these difficulties and problems, the project demonstrates that the new African leaders were able to contribute to the growth and the progress of the SDA Church in its medical, educational and evangelistic programs, that the SDA Church from about 4,000 members under the missionaries' leadership in 1959 grew to 12,000 under African leadership from 1960 to 1981. Above all, the new African leaders were able to maintain the unity of the Church without any schism.;In the process of writing this project, extensive primary materials were used. These primary materials included letters, minutes of committee meetings, administrative memoranda and policy statements, theses and dissertations, addresses, sermons, speeches, constituency reports, published periodicals, lectures and interviews. In addition, other scholarly works on Adventism, Christianity in Africa and Nigeria in particular, were consulted. Geographical maps of Nigeria and Adventism in Western Nigeria are included to aid the reader to understand the geographical areas covered by this project.;The purpose of this project is to examine the inauguration and first two decades of African leadership in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (SDA) in Western Nigeria, which coincided with the end of British colonial administration in the country. A survey of the SDA Church from its early beginnings, the missionaries' activities, and the establishment of the Church in Western Nigeria are incorporated to provide the reader the background of the Church, African involvement as apprentices, and later their occupying of leadership position. |
