Abstract
This article interrogates the entanglements of mission history, Christian expansion, and regional particularity in colonial and post-colonial Nigeria by foregrounding the life and ministry of Paul Gindiri, an indigenous missionary whose contributions remain conspicuously absent from dominant missiological narratives. Through a critical analysis of archival primary materials and relevant secondary scholarship, the study demonstrates that Gindiri exemplifies a cohort of African Christian agents whose mobility, linguistic competence, and embeddedness within local sociocultural worlds enabled forms of evangelistic reach and ecclesial consolidation that frequently exceeded the capacities of Western missionaries. By situating Gindiri within broader debates on African agency, subaltern missiology, and the reconfiguration of Christian geographies in twentieth-century Nigeria, the article argues that indigenous missionaries were not merely auxiliaries to Western mission enterprises but were, in fact, principal architects of Christian expansion. The study thus challenges Eurocentric historiographies and advances a more regionally attentive and analytically robust account of the making of modern Nigerian Christianity.
Introduction
In 1996, Christians across Northern Nigeria bewailed the passing away of Evangelist Paul Gofo Gunen Gindiri who had battled with a stroke in 1993 but lost the battle with prostate cancer. He was buried in his hometown, a place with which he shared his name, Gindiri, Mangu Local Government Area, Plateau State. While I was growing up in the 1990s in Nigeria, my mother would often play recordings of Gindiri, and although this habit reflected her devout commitment to Christianity, it was common for people in Northern Nigeria who understood Hausa to listen to recordings of his sermons. Pastors and preachers quoted his words and messages from their pulpits. Women, men, young people, and fellowship groups sang songs composed by him and his companions. Cab and delivery truck drivers listened to his tapes in their vehicles, and so did businesspeople in their retail shops. Gindiri's prominence as an indigenous Christian preacher and evangelist in modern Nigeria was in large part due to his role in the Christian expansion movement, New Life for All (NLFA), translated from the Hausa as Sabon Rai Don Kowa.
This article examines the first thirty years of Paul Gindiri's life. Background information and details about Gindiri help to provide a better understanding of the circumstances that influenced various aspects of his life and to help readers understand how similar and dissimilar these experiences were to those of his contemporaries, his own relatives, and people today. This case study will also help the reader understand the cultural and social identity of not only of the people of his ethnic and religious group, and perhaps minority Christians in Northern Nigeria more generally. I draw on archival sources, secondary literature, 2025 interviews, and my own experiences to this end.
The terminology of Christian mission in Africa has a contested history that demands acknowledgement. Many scholars have argued that the undifferentiated category of “missionary” flattens African Christianity into a Western transmission and obscures the indigenous agents who carried the faith into communities that Western missions never reached. In Translating the Message, Sanneh (1989) reframes Christian expansion as a process of vernacular translation in which African receivers reshape the faith through their own languages. Kwame Bediako's Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion (1995) treats African Christianity as a development in its own right, and Ogbu Kalu's African Christianity: An African Story (2005) positions Nigerian preachers like Gindiri as primary actors within that history. Following this scholarship, I reserve “missionary” for any faith-based mission personnel who operated inside colonial frameworks. For Gindiri I use “evangelist,” which matches his own self-identification. I retain “expansion” as a descriptive noun for the growth of Christianity in Nigeria but avoid “expansionist” and “expansionism,” terms with connotations of territorial conquest that are alien to Gindiri's vocation.
The first thirty years of Paul Gindiri: Culture, identity, and religion
The early life of Paul Gindiri echoes different aspects of a typical indigenous person born in the age of colonial rule in Nigeria, characterized by Western Protestant missionary presence in Nigeria, the skirmish and struggle for identity, boundary adjustments, the spread of early and adult education as well as modern technologies, and new interchanges between the many and diverse cultures of Nigeria (Kolapo, 2022). The far North and parts of Central Nigeria were the furthest reaches of Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio's Jihad and the Fulani/Islamic Caliphate (Turaki, 2010). Gindiri's birth and early upbringing can be better understood in the context of the larger societal and political events of the time in which he lived.
Gindiri was born to the family of Gunen Saidu Sedet and Magajiya Naru on March 3, 1935 in Pumbush (Kasuwan Ali), a village near Gindiri, among the Pyem people of Mangu Local Government Area in modern-day Plateau State. Gindiri's father had more than one wife, and his mother, Magajiya Naru, was the second wife (Gaiya, 2004).
Polygamy was a common marital practice in West Africa in the early 1900s, and this was also the case among the Pyem and their neighbors in the Middle Belt. The practice of marrying more than one wife varied from ethnic group to ethnic group, and it also varied based on the social and economic status of the man. Rulers and titled men sometimes married many wives, while farmers often married additional wives to have more children who could support the family with farm work. However, many men only married one wife because they could not afford the responsibility of a larger household. In other words, monogamy was also a common practice. The marital laws of different ethnic groups in the Middle Belt, such as the Berom, Igala, and Gwari, were documented in the Journal of African Law during the colonial period. Among the Berom, a man could enter into several marriages, but a woman could only be married to one man at a time. The Igala and Gwari had similar laws, which allowed men to marry as many wives as they could support (Special Collections of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1958).
Western missionaries who came to Africa had a different view of polygamy. From the 1800s to the 1900s, most Protestant missions treated polygamy as a sin and required converts to either dismiss their additional wives or remain outside full membership in the Church. Hastings discusses how missionary churches in Africa would not allow polygamous men to take Holy Communion, hold positions of leadership in the Church, or in some cases to be baptized at all. This caused serious problems because when a man dismissed his wives, the wives and their children were often left without support, and sometimes the wives’ families would not accept them back. Over time, some churches adopted a more flexible approach, which allowed polygamous converts to be baptized but not to hold leadership positions. This became the common approach of many Nigerian churches in the twentieth century (Hastings, 1994).
John Mbiti argues that polygamy in Africa should not simply be understood as a sign of the inferiority of women. According to Mbiti, polygamy was connected to African cultural values around fertility, continuation of the family line, and the social protection of women who might otherwise not have the opportunity to marry. At the same time, Mbiti acknowledges that polygamous families had a clear hierarchy, with the first wife usually holding a higher status than the junior wives. The first wife often served as the leader among the wives when the husband was absent, and she sometimes had authority over the other wives and their children. Mbiti's work has been expanded by later scholars, but his overall argument that polygamy served important social functions remains influential (Mbiti, 1991).
The early life of Gindiri must be understood within this cultural context. His parents were not Christians at the time of his birth, and the polygamous structure of his family was not unusual among the Pyem people. Although Gindiri later became a prominent Christian evangelist, his preaching did not focus on polygamy or other marital issues that were contested within the churches. His messages were centered on salvation and repentance. Like many first-generation converts who came from polygamous families across Nigeria, Gindiri did not reject his family background, but he also did not marry more than one wife himself. He remained married to Lami until the end of his life.
Gindiri was the second child of his parents, and theirs was a very large family. He was the second of fourteen children his mother bore (Tushima, 2017). Before the era of Nigerian independence, families desired to have as many children as possible (P2, personal communication, 16 December 2025). Mothers gave birth to ten and sometimes more than twenty children, (P1, personal communication, 16 December 2025) and they took pride in their fertility. Indeed, there was stigma and negative stereotypes attached to barrenness or giving birth to fewer children, including the suspicion that witches and wizards have bedeviled the barren woman's womb or that her ancestors had cursed her (Tushima, 2017). Sacrifices and prayers were sometimes offered to ward off such curses (Tushima, 2017). One interviewee reported: “Like many parents of the late 1800s and early 1900s, Gindiri's parents did not attend school; they were farmers who sought to train their children in farming, the most common occupation among the general population at the time.” (P3, personal communication, 21 December 2025). They also were not Christians (Galadima, 2024). His first Christian experience and conversion were a result of close interaction and a relationship with the missionaries of Sudan Interior Mission (SIM), who settled in the towns and villages of Gindiri (P6, personal communication, 12 June 2025).
Journey to Christian faith and ministry
Gindiri's journey to conversion, popularity, and ministry is a complex one. Until his passing, he lacked a clear pathway to determine who and what he would become. The conversion of Gindiri to Christianity can be described as a “twofold conversion,” referring to the first conversion he experienced in the village and the second conversion he underwent in Jos, following his experience in the Niger. During the patristic period, many Christian faithful struggled with the questions of baptism and apostasy, as well as their relationship to salvation (Wright, 1988). Therefore, they asked questions like, “what happens to the conversion/repentance and baptism of Christians who either backslide or apostize?” By the third and fouth centuries, some Christians were choosing to go through two baptisms, one as an infant and the second to prepare for death, to avoid going to hellfire (Wright, 1988).
Gindiri encountered SUM missionaries when he was a teenager and decided to become a Christian in Kasuwan Ali of Mangu LGA. The story is told that before his first conversion, Gindiri had a mystical experience (Dung, 2022). He saw spirits several times in his dreams, although they never harmed him or affected his life as a human. Hence, Gindiri spoke to the European missionaries working in his village in Mangu, and they prayed for him. The dreams stopped. Gindiri's conversion to Christianity was met with resistance and opposition from his father and the community. Gindiri and some friends with whom he converted were persecuted until he left the village for Jos in 1946.
African cultures and indigenous religions have long held beliefs in mysticism, visions, and dreams, much like many world religions. Visions and dreams play a significant role in people's daily lives and experiences (Dung, 2022). There were beliefs that witches and wizards could attack a person through visions and dreams if they disliked the person. Ancestors sometimes visit their loved ones in dreams to convey important messages about the world of the living, and at other times, they travel with them to the land of the dead (Dung, 2022). As one interviewee put it quite succinctly, “Gindiri's experiences of mysticism as a young person were fairly common.” (P4, personal communication, December 18, 2025). Missionaries of the early 1900s who visited Central Nigeria reported different scenes of praying for people experiencing demonic attacks and bad dreams. The Western and early Black indigenous missionaries like Ajayi Crowther prayed for deliverance for victims of sorcery and witchcraft (P4, personal communication, 18 December 2025).
Deliverance prayer in mainline churches of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries inherited the practice from the early Western missionaries, and it tends to be brief and private. People experiencing night terrors or bad dreams typically approach a pastor in confidence, and the pastor will pray with them in a short and direct session. In Pentecostal and charismatic settings, deliverance prayer is usually longer, more public, and more emotionally intense, and it often involves direct verbal confrontation with the spiritual forces believed to afflict the person. Kalu and Meyer have documented these differences in style and emphasis across West African Christianity, and both note that the Pentecostal approach reflects a wider theological framework in which ongoing spiritual warfare is central to the Christian life (Kalu, 2008 & Meyer, 1999). Ojo (2006), in his study of charismatic movements in modern Nigeria, notes that this emphasis on continuous spiritual warfare has been criticized, including by observers within the Pentecostal tradition, for encouraging dependency on the pastor or the church for ongoing protection. The criticism has been pointed enough that some charismatic churches have responded by revising their teaching on deliverance to emphasize the believer's own spiritual authority rather than the mediating role of the minister.
Gindiri's life significantly changed after he left his hometown. While he moved from one job to another and from one city to another, Gindiri also took up heavy drinking, womanizing, and tobacco smoking (Dung, 2022). In such churches as Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), where Gindiri was a member until his demise, communicant members are prohibited from taking alcohol, and the Church leaders can excommunicate anyone caught doing so (Gindiri, 1994). The same applies to denominations such as the Baptist Church, Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN), the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria (LCCN), Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN), also known as the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, and the Evangelical Church of Christ in Nigeria (ECCN) (Gindiri, 1994). He had become involved in using charms and amulets (P7, personal communication, 21 June 2025), and the use of charms and amulets is prohibited in Christianity as a form of idol worship or paganism. Many Christians correlate it to a biblical injunction in the Old Testament that affirms, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Unsurprisingly then, Gindiri also became less consistent in his Church attendance as he traveled.
Gaiya mentions two interaction between Gindiri and Muslims of Northern Nigeria that significantly impacted, his way of life and religious practices. He learned to speak the Hausa language more fluently than his native language, Pyem (Galadima, 2024). He may also have learned a substantial portion of the Qur’an by heart because he later used in his preaching and evangelization in Northern Nigeria. Because Northern Nigeria has a long history of Islamic influence and Arab and North African presence, most missionaries have sought to combine knowledge of the Qur’an and the Bible to be effective preachers in Central and Northern Nigeria (Turner, 2003). In the 1800s, some missionaries were deliberate in learning Arabic to minister to Muslims, or they attended the Fourah Bay Theological Seminary in Sierra Leone to gain a deeper understanding of the Qur’an's contents. Frederick Schon, Thomas Cole, and Ajayi Crowther of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) are a few of such missionaries (Crowther, 1860-79). Scholars of Christian-Muslim engagement in West Africa, including Trimingham, Sanneh, and Barnes, have argued that effective Christian ministry in Muslim-majority regions requires a working knowledge of the Qur’an, Arabic, and the local culture (Barnes, 2009; Sanneh, 1996 & Trimingham, 1962). Today's theological schools in Northern Nigeria deliberately teach courses on these topics as well as Arabic to prepare students for missions within and beyond the borders of Northern Nigeria and West Africa. Gindiri, however, did not learn the Qur’an or the cultures of Northern Nigeria in a formal school setting, nor did he learn it for the purpose of ministry. The Northern culture and Islam influenced Gindiri through day-to-day life.
The 1930s marked the official annexation of the Northern region by colonial powers, which occurred five years before the birth of Gindiri (John, 1865). This annexation enabled the British to capture most of the far North, an area with a long history of Islamic presence. Already, the British had interacted with the larger South and Central parts of the country (Turaki, 2010). After the annexation and amalgamation of the different regions, Western missionaries began to show increased interest in evangelizing to Muslim communities in the North. Because of their knowledge of reading and writing in Arabic, some elites in Northern Nigeria had, from their early encounters with European missionaries and colonialists, a perception that the indigenous Muslims of Central Nigeria and Northern Nigeria had a more organized religious system than their non-Muslim counterparts (Turaki, 2010). Arabic is the liturgical language of a devout Sunni Muslim, so even if the majority population of Muslims in Northern Nigeria and the Middle Belt did not know how to read and write by 1841, their elites did (Turaki, 2010).
For example, Crowther shared in one journal their presentation of the Gospel of John to traditional rulers in the Bida-Lokoja areas and one to the Sultan of Sokoto. He notes, Last year, a copy of St John's Gospel in printed Arabic characters was presented to King Masaba and another one to the Sultan of Sokoto, and through him, a few more were given to the priests at the King's palace, which were acceptable to them. Copies are reserved for sale at Lokoja to people who may want to have one. In this quiet way, we introduce Christianity among the Mohammedans (Crowther, 1869-72, p. 6). The reception of an Arabic Bible, which was presented to the Emir Nupe by the Church Missionary Society, with a childlike glee in the presence of his courtiers, was proof that these people desired to hear and search after the truth. Another copy was sent through him to Alihu, the King of Ilorin, who is also an Arabic Scholar (Crowther, 1860-79, p. there should be a page number here since it is direct quotation. I did include it because it is not in the footnote. Please find and update)
After Gindiri became a Christian evangelist, he often compared himself to Paul the Apostle, whom he would describe as an anti-Christian, tough, and somewhat rugged (Gaiya, 2004). His last name, Gindiri, participated in a common practice toponyms as surnames shared between pre-Independence Nigeria and biblical times: Jesus himself is often “Jesus of Nazareth”; Paul is sometimes called “Paul of Tarsus.” (Wilhite, 2017). The Hausa-Fulanis of Northern Nigeria still bearing names and nicknames of their villages and towns, and the practice is quite common among landowners.
Gindiri's choice of the name “Paul” over his other names and his general admiration for Paul over other apostles and prominent preachers and theologians of the historical past is a good example of how the new identities that many people of modern periods hold on to after their encounters with foreign religions are nevertheless grounded in a sense of historical tradition (Gindiri, 1994). New converts to Christianity often preferred naming their children after figures from the Old and New Testaments or a Western missionary who had made a significant impact among their people (Ohihon, 2004). In politics and political discourse, people often discuss regions and territories more than any other topic, which at the grassroots level means advocating for the zoning of political seats after each election and voting cycle (Mu’azzam and Ibrahim, 2000). In Plateau State, where Gindiri is from, the governorship candidate is zoned and shared after an eight-year term among people from the Southern, Central, and Northern zones. Within each zone, there are multiple ethnic groups (Ibrahim, 2000). The same applies to Local Government Council elections.
Gindiri became a non-committed Christian when he left his village and hometown. In addition to this, the Old Testament provides many narratives about how God severely frowns upon the Israelites who keep images or symbols for protection or provision. 1 There is no record of Gindiri denouncing his Christian identity when he left the village.
Gindiri married devout Christian, Lami, who attended the historic Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) Bishara 1 in Jos in 1960 (Tushima, 2017). At the time of their marriage, Gindiri owned a truck driving business and enjoyed spending time outside the home, often drinking and attending nightclubs. Lami was dedicated to the Women's Fellowship, Bible Study, and prayer in her Church and would always pray for her husband to return to the Christian faith. She knew how little commitment he had to the Church and the lifestyle he led as a truck driver. After Gindiri became a Christian again, his life underwent a significant transformation, and his perspective on family also shifted (Gindiri, 1994).
Gindiri and Lami had seven children, of whom their first was called Musa, followed by Iliya, Dauda, Yakubu, Joshua, Victoria, and Wudeama (Gindiri, 1994). Gindiri choose instead now to spend his freetime with his wife and children, unless he was at work or traveling for evangelism under the auspices of NLFA (Gindiri, 1994). When Gindiri traveled, he would buy gifts for everyone upon his return home (P8, personal communication, 12 August 2025). When his children were young, he would sit them down in the compound and teach them songs and Bible basics as a Sunday school teacher would (Dung, 2022). Gindiri sometimes invited the children of his neighbors to benefit from his moral teachings. The deliberate efforts to raise a good Christian family was shared with many post-missionary-period converts and clergy in Nigeria (Gindiri, 1994 and Dung, 2022). Indeed, failure to do so can lead the community and the Church to shame the parents because it is often assumed that a child's lifestyle reflects the education they receive from their parents (Gindiri, 1994 and Dung, 2022).
Gindiri prayed with his wife, Lami, and his children every day (Gindiri, 1994). It is still the practice among Christian families in Nigeria to hold morning devotions every day with their entire family, mainly led by the father and occasionally by the mother (Gindiri, 1994). Morning devotions can last an hour or more; families read passages of scripture, interpret them, and draw several applications from them that they could apply to their lives. Hymns and songs are sung before or after a thirty-minute exaltation. Some parents use morning devotions to address any issues they sense are developing in the family or pass on words of advice to their growing children.
Gindiri was a hardworking individual, he provided shelter, food, and an education for his children, whom he sent to the best elite schools in Jos and abroad from the 1970s to the 1990s (Gindiri, 1994). Musa, for example, was sent to school in Germany and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, and his first degree was from an American university, like many children of the elites and politicians from the First Republic. When he graduated, his father put him in charge of his businesses and prepared him to take over his vast, growing business assets (Gindiri, 1994 and Dung, 2022).
Iliya was also sent to the United States for post-secondary education. He completed an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in Agriculture (Gindiri, 1994 and Dung, 2022). Gindiri planned to send Yakubu to school in the United States as well, but securing a visa became very difficult for any Nigerian from late1980s to 1990s (Gindiri, 1994). Instead, Yakubu stayed back in Jos and worked directly with his father, who taught him the technical skills required to help run his companies. Joshua was sent to the US after high school completed postgraduate studies in Computer Science (P9, personal communication 12 August 2025). Victoria, the only daughter, passed away in an automobile accident in 1990. Wudeama completed undergraduate studies in Nigeria and became an artist and musician.
Gindiri's main conversion happened after a tragic event on Nasarawa Road while he was returning from Niger State in 1962 (Gaiya, 2004). Dung calls it the “Nasarawa Road” experience, a choice that flags parallels to Paul's conversion en route to Damascus. As a truck driver, Gindiri was on an assignment to Niger State sent by the company he was working with. Typically, while on assignment, the company arranges accommodations for the drivers. After work, they engage in activities outside of the work they are assigned to do, including drinking, socializing, and womanizing (Gindiri, 1994 and Dung, 2022). While in the hotel, Gindiri got into a drunken fight over a prostitute with another man and used a beer bottle to hit the man over the head such that blood started gushing out (Tushima, 2017). Gindiri was arrested and taken into police custody. He and his friends worried the man would not survive, so they bribed the police to write what they called a “statement” in favor of Gindiri (Gindiri, 1994).
The Police agreed to change the statement to report that Gindiri had acted in self-defense. Corruption in the police and other civil services has been a long-standing issue in Nigeria (Tushima, 2017). Gindiri may have escaped the secular justice system, but he was deeply remorseful about the incident (after he sobered up and realized what had happened (Gindiri, 1994). Gindiri immediately began making changes and decided to quietly give up his reckless lifestyle (Gindiri, 1994 and Dung, 2022). An interviewee reported, “When Gindiri chose to change his life, most readers of his biography, who are also familiar with the story of the prodigal son can easily relate the two, with few nuances.” (P10, personal communication, 16 August 2024) The parable in Luke 15:11–32 is about a younger son asks for his inheritance early, effectively wishing his father dead, then travels to a distant country and wastes all his money on wild living and is forced into a degrading state to survive through a famine. The father forgives everything and urges the older son, who is resentful, to celebrate his brother's return as well. Gindiri only chose to return to God after a brush with the law and imprisonment.
Gindiri was released from police custody, and when the time came for them to leave Minna, Niger State, for Nasarawa State and then Jos, they departed (Gindiri, 1994). After arriving at Nasasara, the company, as usual, lodged Gindiri and his colleagues in a hotel. For the first time, the soon-to-be evangelist declined the hotel lodgings because he believed that staying in a hotel could tempt him to old habits, as he had been in the past. Instead, Gindiri stayed with a friend and only met with his colleagues during the day at work (Tushima, 2017). His coworkers were surprised that Gindiri declined this offer. While returning to Jos from Nasarawa, Gindiri's friends repeatedly offered him cigarettes. He refused, and they too were surprised that he had made such a sudden and drastic decision.
When Gindiri returned to Jos from his trip, he told his wife that he had decided to change (P11, personal communication, 15 August 2024). Lami immediately accepted his new decision and encouraged him to share it with their Church, Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) Bishara 1, and take the necessary steps toward admission into the Church and to possibly becoming a communicant member (Gindiri, 1994 and Dung, 2022). Gindiri did not share the whole story of what happened in Niger with his wife, so Lami concluded merely that her prayers had been answered (Gindiri, 1994).
On his first Sunday after returning from Niger State, Gindiri presented himself to the Church. He kept attend more consistently than before (Gindiri, 1994). On two occasions, the pastor drew applications that appeared to Gindiri as if he was speaking directly to him and about his gambling and use of charms and amulets (Gindiri, 1994 and Dung, 2022). An interviewee described what happened on a third such occasion (P12, personal communication, 21 December 2025). This time around, Gindiri came forward to be prayed for and confessed his past as well as his commitment to rededicate his life (Tushima, 2017). Gindiri brought out all his charms and amulets in his possession and burned them in a fire.
Good sermons in the 1960s were characterized by applications rather than interpretations, and Gindiri himself also adopted this style of preaching that seeks to convict people until they feel guilty and repent. For example, a pastor might emphasizes what he knows is a very common vice in society, such as drinking, and then emphasizes this every Sunday in his sermons by preaching that every drunkard will go to hellfire if they do not repent.
Gindiri soon bought two Hausa Bibles and a hymnbook and was devoting his leisure time to studying the Bible and learning to sing hymns. Gradually, he developed a passion and a quest to teach and preach the Bible to people around him and in the city of Jos (Gindiri, 1994).
The mission and mandate of new life for all
This second conversion was also the beginning of Gindiri's involvement with the New Life for All Christian evangelistic movement in Jos and the southern parts of Kaduna (Dung, 2022). The Hausa name for New Life for All is Sabon Rai Don Kowa, and it carries the biblical message that “if anyone is in Christ Jesus, they are a new creature; behold, the old has passed away, and the new is here.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) The use of Sabon Rai Don Kowa as a slogan among the people to whom Gindiri was ministering. They would ask if they had a new life, and then go on to say, “It is for everyone.” Gindiri was later popularly associated with the slogan (Gindiri, 1994).
After the dramatic experience in Minna, Niger State and his decision to quit smoking and drinking and return to the Christian faith, Gindiri also soon started his evangelistic ministry (Gindiri, 1994). He came in contact with a missionary whose goal was to reach out to primarily Muslim communities in Jos, especially those who migrated from the northernmost regions of Nigeria for mining, business, and colonial government jobs (Tushima, 2017). Tushima (2017) describes how after the conversion of Gindiri, he was adopted Rev. and Mrs. Jacobson who supported and trained him in their approach to evangelism to Muslims. Gindiri soon launched into the ministry of street evangelism in Jos, taking after another SIM missionary active in the city, Dr Andrew Stirrett (Tushima, 2017).
Stirrett was a Canadian physician who moved to Jos in the early 1900s after hearing about the report of one of the founders of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) and the needs in Central Sudan. He was the first medical doctor to arrive in Jos as a missionary (Dung, 2022). When he first arrived in Nigeria served as both a missionary and a physician at Bingham Memorial Hospital in Pategi, where the SIM headquarters were located (Gindiri, 1994). Stirrett was moved to Jos, where he built a Gospel Center near the Kantoma market, right at the center of Jos metropolis. Today, the Gospel Center is located near Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) Good News Church on Ahmadu Bello Way. Dr Stirrett took ill and passed away in 1948. He had installed and positioned his preaching equipment for use on weekends, but his open-air evangelism was not significant (Dung, 2022). After his demise, Baba Bello, who had known the Canadian missionary personally, took over the mantle of reaching out to Muslim communities, but he did not embark on open evangelism (Dung, 2022). When Paul Gindiri took up public evangelism in the same place where Stirrett used to preach every weekend in 1962, many people, including Muslims who knew Stirrett closely, inferred that someone who was possibly a disciple had emerged (Dung, 2022).
Gindiri engaged in open-air evangelism targeting the Muslim communities in Jos and Bukuru Metropolis every Friday and Saturday (Yako, 1989, 14, personal communication, 16 December 2025). His travels around the heart of Muslim communities gave him an advantage in the NLFA ministry (Dung, 2022). He was eloquent in Hausa; he was familiar with Northern slang and the vocabulary for both religious and daily life (Yako, 1989). On Sunday evenings, they formed a non-denominational gathering of Christians (Yako, 1989 and Gaiya, 2004). As his ministry was gaining traction with pastors, women's groups, and young people, he also began to receive more funding to support the group. He decided to expand his network to cover all of Northern Nigeria (Yako, 1989).
The expansion of the NLFA ministry across Northern Nigeria depended on a network of local support that included financial backing from Gindiri's own businesses, denominational partners, lay volunteers, and political sympathizers. According to Yako (1989), Gindiri funded a significant portion of the ministry's travel, equipment, and outreach activities from the proceeds of his trucking and quarrying operations in Jos, which allowed the team to operate without dependence on a single denominational sponsor. At the institutional level, the cross-denominational Sunday-evening gathering in Jos drew Christians from ECWA, COCIN, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Baptist tradition, EYN, TEKAN, and other bodies, and these denominations contributed pastors, venues, and congregations to NLFA's outreaches across the North (Gaiya, 2004). Pastors such as Rev. Musa Tsakani Dass in Bauchi and Yakubu Nyako in Kaduna State coordinated local logistics for crusades in their regions (Gindiri, 1994). The Gospel Team branch within NLFA continued to support Gindiri's preaching style after the SIM-led leadership of NLFA distanced itself from him. At the political level, Gindiri's working relationship with Chief Solomon D. Lar, then Governor of Plateau State, gave the ministry a degree of public legitimacy in its home base, although Gindiri did not seek government funding for the ministry's activities. The ministry also drew on a broader base of lay supporters—businesspeople, drivers, traders, and church members—who provided accommodation, transport, and protection during outreaches in unfamiliar communities (Gindiri, 1994). Gindiri traveled with his crew freely to preach Christianity across Northern Nigeria, something that many European missionaries not only feared doing but also were hindered from doing by colonial administrations who were wary of causing an uprising in Muslim communities (Galadima, 2024). Some pastors’ children from that area still today draw comparisons between Gindiri and his ministry and the activism of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States (Gaiya, 2004).
The NLFA Ministry was a collective vision, mission, and ambition, first ignited by Rev. Gerald Swak, the then-principal of the Bible College in Kagoro, and later kindled and spread by individuals like Pastor Yakubu Nyako and Tambaya Jibrin. As a principal at one of the earliest Bible Colleges in Northern Nigeria, ECWA Bible College, Kagoro, Rev. Swak had always envisioned public evangelism on the streets and in neighborhoods, adopting a mission and evangelism strategy he saw in Latin America (Dung, 2022). Swak attempted to sell those ideas to his earliest students, including Rev. Yusufu Baro. The goal was to mobilize Christians across evangelical denominations in Jos and Kaduna to engage with the public.
In 1963, Swak mobilized Church leaders at a conference in Jos, where he shared his ideas and vision with them (Yako, 1989). They chose Sabon Rai Don Kowa as a name for their endeavor. Swak first served as the leader of the national group and sought a full-time staff member to complement his work. Pastor Yakubu was brought in to fill that role. Gindiri, who was then conducting his ministry in the streets of Jos, decided to associate himself with Rev. Swak and Pastor Nyako, despite being a layman in theology. Acknowledging Gindiri's prowess at public-speaking, Nyako and Swak were pleased and discussed his work schedule and availability to preach when he was not traveling or engaged with the British West African Corporation (BEWAC), his employer. The trio traveled together often.
Later, the leadership of NLFA, then headed by SIM missionaries, lost interest in Gindiri's style of preaching and evangelism (he was too confrontational) (Dung, 2022). Nevertheless, the larger group of followers liked Gindiri so much that when they noticed this, they rallied around him and supported him (Yako, 1989). A branch in the NLFA known as the Gospel Team continued to use Gindiri and supported him in the face of Muslim and Islamic opposition. This internal crisis continued even after the leadership of the group was handed over to indigenous converts (Yako, 1989). The first full-time indigenous leader of the group was Pastor Yakubu Nyako. Later, Pastor Tambaya Jibrin was brought on as a full-time staff member to the group (Dung, 2022).
By the 1970s, Paul Gindiri, Yakubu Nyako, and Tambaya Jibrin led the group, each complementing the others strongly. Pastor Jibrin was known as the prayer and preaching evangelist of the group. Nyako was the teaching evangelist, and Gindiri was the revivalist (Yako, 1989). Their evangelistic ministry fueled a fiery revival that swept across the entire Plateau State and then throughout Northern and Central Nigeria (Dung, 2022). I provide a short narration of how the group was received in four locations, Adamawa, Kano, Keffi, and Bida in what follows to provide perspective on how spread Gindiri's ministry were in Northern Nigeria.
The Mubi Adamawa experience
On February 16, 1977, Gindiri and his NLFA Gospel Team arrived in the city of Adamawa, then part of Gongola State. After mounting their public address system, their outreach was hijacked by a Muslim mob, who began stoning them until the Police intervened at the scene. The following year, Gindiri planned several preaching outreaches in Gongola State, in Ibi, Wukari, and Takum. On their arrival at Ibi, they faced the usual resistance by a Muslim mob, and the same was the experience in Takum, and any Muslim populated community in Northern Nigeria.
Religious entanglement in Kano
Gindiri and the NLFA went to Kano several times. In 1980, Gindiri and his team arrived at a place called Shahuchi in the evening, and by the early morning hours of the following day, they had mounted their public address system and began preaching (Gindiri, 1992). Gindiri and his team were met by violent resistance from the community there. They started stoning them. The windscreens of their vehicles were smashed to pieces, some were injured, but they stayed in Kano as planned. Later in the same month, they returned to the same community again without much better luck. When they visited from June 4 to 7, 1984, they were, however, more cordially received, and Gindiri visited the palace of the Emir of Kano and paid homage to him on the last day of their outreach. They persisted until many converts were won and a spot on those difficult preaching grounds was acquired for a Church building (Gindiri, 1979).
The Keffi experience
In 1982, Gindiri and his NLFA Team went out on an evangelism mission in Keffi, now located in Nasarawa State but part of Plateau State under the leadership of President Olusegun Obasanjo in the 1980s (Gindiri, 1979). Gindiri went to the Emir's palace, mounted his public address system, and started preaching. An angry Muslim mob harassed them and destroyed an existing Church building. Gindiri had a similar experience in the Lafia area of present-day Nasarawa State.
The Bida experience
Gindiri and his team also visited Bida in Niger State for evangelism in 1980. He went to the palace of the Etsu Nupe and asked for permission to preach in Bida. Permission was granted to him, and he went ahead with the usual open-air evangelism (Gindiri, 1994). The palace officials immediately became displeased with his sermon, and they reported him to the police. The Police summoned Gindiri and his team, but he demonstrated that only an official order from the Etsu Nupe could require them to leave.
Political engagement
Despite his friendship with top government officials at both the state and national levels, Gindiri was never publicly accused of bribery to secure a contract to supply stones or gravel from his granite quarry, and such corruption was all-too-common at the time. In 1982, when he purchased a high-capacity stone crushing machine, it was dedicated for use by the then-Governor of Plateau State, Chief Solomon D. Lar. The governor spoke highly of Gindiri and his tireless efforts in contributing to the state's economy. Despite his close relationships with the governor, he did not take advantage of it; instead, he not only preached against the corruption he saw in government, but also called government officials to accountability by challenging serving leaders to openly declare their amassed assets acquired during their relatively short periods of employment in government (Dung, 2022). Gindiri did not remain quiet about the leadership tussle and the age-long marginalization that has been ongoing in the Church either. He openly criticized Church leaders and called on them to set good examples for the younger generation.
Gindiri and the government of General Ibrahim Babangida had sharp disagreements shortly after Babangida registered Nigeria with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and subsequently removed two top military officers from his administration, including a prominent Plateau officer. First, it was Navy Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, and later the Defense Minister, General Domkat Bali. Many Christians, including Gindiri, believed the reason for the removal of those officers was not far from their opposition to Nigeria's registration with the OIC. Right from the time when Gindiri started his ministry, he always called out the regional government of Northern Nigeria, calling it pro-Islam and believing it was working to promote Islamic activities and to a large extent, Islamize the whole country (Dung, 2022).
Due to the continued proliferation of open-air preaching by mostly Christians and the consistency of open-air evangelism by NLFA, the government of Babangida moved quickly to ban any form of open evangelism across the country. At the state level, many states, especially in Northern Nigeria, took it seriously. Paul Gindiri was the first person to stand against this decree and vowed to continue with his public, open-air preaching. Some churches, which were less concerned with preaching, chose to comply with the order.
The current CAN was formed in the context of consistent clashes between Christians and Muslims in Northern Nigeria and the outcry of the likes of Gindiri. As Kukah documents, CAN was founded in 1976 through the convening efforts of the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Dominic Ekandem, who brought together Catholic, Protestant, and other Christian bodies in response to constitutional debates over the role of Sharia in the proposed 1979 Constitution (Kukah, 1993). It began as an interdenominational association in the North, known as the “Northern Christian Association” (NCA), with Jolly Tanko Yusuf as its pioneer leader (Gaiya, 2004). The earliest leaders of CAN attempted to respond to the Christian control over educational institutions in Nigeria that was primarily established by European missionaries (Gaiya, 2004). During those years, Gindiri and J.Y. Yusuf, representing CAN, became the most outspoken critics of the Babangida government (Gindiri, 1994). The memories of Gindiri remain fresh in Northern Nigeria due to his entanglements in social, political, and religious affairs.
During the era of Gindiri's ministry, most Christians had distanced themselves from Nigerian partisan politics, and those who did participate faced constant criticism and mockery from committed Christians who sometimes compared them to the tax collectors in the New Testament (Lamak, 2025). This disassociation of Christians from politics was worse in Northern Nigeria, and the younger generations believe the initial responses of preceding generations heavily impact them (Lamak, 2025 and Turaki, 2009). Christians in Northern Nigeria began to rise and participate in politics during the time of Babangida, when he implemented policies I mentioned earlier, which did not favor the majority Christian population. Colonialists had handed over most of Northern Nigeria to Hausa-Fulani Muslims when they were leaving the country after independence, in part because non-Muslim groups in the Middle Belt and elsewhere had largely been excluded from the colonial-era political structures through which power was being transferred (Falola and Heaton, 2008).
Missionaries had propagated a Gospel that encouraged Christians to seek a future life with God in heaven rather than on earth, with the teaching that “We are in the world, but we are not of the world.” (John 17:16) States like Adamawa, Nasarawa, and Kaduna have a significant Christian population and indigenous religion practitioners, who may hold government positions and advocate for religious freedom and incentives for their communities. The tale is also told that the non-Hausa-Fulani populations are minority groups in states who continue to experience marginalization of various sorts. Until the 1990s, some Christians refused to go to polling units to cast their vote, because they did not care or they still held onto their religious beliefs that Christians are not supposed to be too involved in things of the world, including politics.
The 2023 elections have left many in the Nigerian Christian population feeling regretful. For the first time in the country's history, the presidential candidate from the All Progressive Congress (APC) and his running mate were Muslim's from a Yoruba-speaking community and Muslim and a Northern Hausa-speaking community respectively. Recent Nigerian elections have been the subject of widespread allegations of irregularity and fraud from both international and Nigerian election observer bodies (European Union Election Observation Mission, 2023). The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission and the incumbent president are both from the North, factors that are widely believed to influence the outcome of elections in Nigeria. Non-Muslims in Nigeria are learning the hard way what happens when an entire community choosing not to participate in politics in their communities and the country at large.
New life for all today
Soon after Paul Gindiri's death, another branch of the NLFA Ministry emerged, the NLFA Singing Group, which Dung did not discuss in his 2002 biography on Gindiri, perhaps partly because the group did not have direct or extensive contact with the man himself, Yakubu Yako, and Tambaya Jibrin in the 1990s (Lageer, 1969). Young people dominate the singing arm of NLFA. They are not considered as strong as the evangelism team of the group, which is preaching-centered and was pioneered by Gindiri, Yakubu, and their contemporaries.
The singing group attracted a large following from Gombe, Adamawa, Taraba State, and Maiduguri in Borno State. The founder of the group, who is still alive, is from Yola in Adamawa State. Markus Y. Audu, who founded the group, was a secret disciple of Paul Gindiri and envisioned supporting and augmenting the efforts of his ministry since Gindiri was widely known in Northern Nigeria (Lageer, 1969). Markus is gifted in African cultural arts, including singing and playing local instruments, which were criticized by Western missionaries during their adventures in Nigeria.
The group's network has been expanded to churches across the Northwest and Northeast of Nigeria, with branches at the state and regional levels, which come together for conferences featuring preaching sessions, Bible teaching, and singing competitions (EYN Gospel Team, n.d.). They also occasionally organize missions and evangelism outreaches within the communities around them. However, most members of the NLFA Singing Group are young people between 12 and 40 years old, who often depend on their parents for financial support. A few are trying to achieve financial independence by taking on menial jobs.
As one of the few legacies of Gindiri, the NLFA group is still active; however, it no longer operates under the same models/structure as its early founders conceived it. Every year, they embark on a national outreach with a large number of Christian followers, mainly from the mainline churches of Northern Nigeria (EYN Gospel Team, n.d.). The group targets communities of African Indigenous Religion practitioners and lukewarm Christian communities to motivate and revive them (EYN Gospel Team, n.d.). The group travels to neighboring West and West Central African countries, including Guinea, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Ghana. Unlike during the time of Gindiri, when Muslim communities were his target, the NLFA has now changed its strategies, rarely getting into direct contact with Muslim communities in Northern Nigeria when they go out for outreaches and evangelism, as some of their outreaches are more of conventions held in sports stadiums (EYN Gospel Team, n.d.). They avoid confrontation and name-calling with non-Christians. Since the founding of the NLFA Singing Group, both arms of the ministry have collaborated to hold national outreach events and conventions. The singing arm supports the preaching and teaching groups with song ministrations during their conventions (EYN Gospel Team, n.d.). So, NLFA seems to have a larger following and network compared to the time of Gindiri and Yakubu Yako (Gindiri, 1979).
Occasionally, the name of Evangelist Paul Gindiri is mentioned as a pioneering figure; members of the existing group fondly remember his outreach legacies and vision (Gindiri, 1979).
Conclusion
Beyond its biographical and historical contributions, the life of Paul Gindiri carries a theological implication for how African Christianity has understood conversion, grace, and the formation of indigenous Christian witness. Gindiri's two conversions—the first in his village of Gindiri under the influence of SIM missionaries, and the second in Jos at ECWA Bishara 1 in 1962—illustrate a pattern that recurs in African Christian biography, in which initial conversion in a missionary context is followed by a period of religious dislocation and a subsequent return to the faith on terms shaped by the convert's own cultural and personal circumstances. The theological category that this pattern most directly engages is grace.
In the Christian tradition, grace names God's freely given mercy toward those who have departed from righteousness. The theology of grace as was preached in the ECWA churches Gindiri attended emphasizes that human salvation does not depend on the convert's moral consistency but on God's continued willingness to receive those who return. Proverb 24:16 (“the righteous may fall seven times but rise again”) has been used in African evangelical preaching to describe this dimension of Christian life. Gindiri's biography gives this theological claim a concrete African setting. His drinking, his use of charms and amulets, his violence in Niger State, and his subsequent return to the Church are not incidental details in the story of an evangelist; they are constitutive of the witness he later carried into Northern Nigeria, where his preaching addressed audiences whose own lives often involved similar departures and returns.
The theological implication for African mission studies is that indigenous Christian witness in twentieth-century Nigeria did not develop along the trajectory of unbroken piety that early Western missionary biographies often presented. It developed through figures like Gindiri whose authority as evangelists rested in part on their having lived through the moral and religious complexities, they later preached against. This is not a uniquely African pattern, but it has had a particular shape in African Christianity, where the encounter between indigenous religious frameworks, Islamic presence, and Christian missionary teaching has produced converts whose theological understanding is forged through repeated negotiation rather than through linear progression. Gindiri's mastery of both the Bible and the Qur’an, his fluency in Hausa, and his use of indigenous cultural resources in his preaching reflect the same pattern at the level of theological method: an indigenous Christian witness that draws on the full range of the convert's religious and cultural formation rather than rejecting it.
The life and ministry of evangelist Paul Gindiri also offer several lessons for ecclesial mission engagement in Nigeria and West Africa today. First, churches should invest in the formation of indigenous evangelists who are conversant with the religious and cultural traditions of the communities they minister among. Gindiri's effectiveness in Northern Nigeria rested in significant part on his fluency in Hausa, his familiarity with the Qur’an, and his understanding of Northern Muslim cultural life. Theological institutions in Northern Nigeria already recognize this principle in their curriculum, and the recommendation here is that denominational mission boards prioritize the support and deployment of evangelists with these competencies. Second, mission engagement in religiously plural settings benefits from non-denominational cooperation. Contemporary mainline churches in Northern Nigeria, faced with similar challenges of religious tension and Christian minority status, have a precedent in the NLFA model for cross-denominational collaboration that does not require any church to compromise its distinct theological commitments. Third, the Church should take seriously the role of laypeople in mission. Gindiri began his evangelistic ministry as a layman with no formal theological training, and his partnership with Rev. Swak and Pastor Nyako depended on the willingness of ordained ministers to recognize and support lay gifts. Mission strategies that confine evangelism to ordained clergy risk overlooking laypeople whose ordinary lives bring them into daily contact with communities that clergy may not easily reach. Fourth, ecclesial engagement with public life should distinguish between prophetic witness and partisan alignment. Gindiri spoke critically against government corruption and policies he understood to threaten the welfare of Christian communities, but he did not align himself with any political party, and he did not seek office. Fifth, mission work should be sustained through deliberate succession planning. The decline in NLFA's reach after Gindiri's passing illustrates the cost of a movement that depends too heavily on a single charismatic figure.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.