NOVEMBER 2025

The Sunday That Changed Everything

Last Sunday I watched a Catholic choir in flowing white robes belt out “How Great Thou Art” in perfect harmony. Ten minutes later, the same choir leader knelt in the same robe, cracked a kola nut, and called seven ancestors by name. Nobody gasped. Nobody left. This is Nigeria in 2025: Jesus and the ancestors now share the same compound, the same palm wine, the same Sunday afternoon.

Meet Chioma, Age 34, Mother of Three, Former “Demon-Chaser”

Until Two Years Ago
Chioma used to lead deliverance sessions where people screamed out “marine spirits.” Today she keeps a rosary in her handbag and a small red-earth shrine behind her kitchen.
“The white man gave us half the story,” she says, wiping palm oil from her fingers. “We are just collecting the rest.”

The Ex-Priest Who Became a Dibia

Father Emmanuel (not his real name) resigned from the Catholic priesthood in 2023, grew dreads, and now heals with herbs and incantations—while still celebrating Mass on feast days.
“The Vatican calls it syncretism,” he laughs. “I call it completion. The God who made the yam also made the Bible.”

The Numbers Nobody Wants to Admit

Every traditional healer I met from Awka to Enugu said the same thing: 2024–2025 has been their busiest period ever. Most new clients are under forty, university-educated, and carry both a Bible app and an Ifá consultation receipt on the same phone.

Why Now?

• Pastors bought private jets while parents couldn’t buy medicine.
• Rivers turned poisonous and forests disappeared; prosperity gospel had no answer.
• #EndSARS and global Black consciousness made colonial Christianity feel like handcuffs.

TikTok Is the New Pulpit

Search “ancestral prayer for Christians” on TikTok Nigeria and you’ll find 26-year-old Adanna teaching 250k followers how to pour libation without “losing salvation.” The comment section is full of born-again youth begging for step-by-step guides.

The Backlash Is Loud – And Losing

Some megachurches now run weekly “deliverance from ancestral bondage” classes. One Lagos pastor called the movement “the devil’s reparations.” Yet even he admitted privately: attendance is dropping. People are voting with their feet—and their kola nuts.

Chioma’s Final Word

I asked if she fears hell. She pointed to the small mound behind her house.
“My grandmother is buried there. If hell is real, she will meet me at the gate and we will argue with the angels together.”

In Nigeria tonight, millions are holding the cross in one hand and the kola nut in the other—refusing to choose between the God who saved them and the ancestors who never left.

The missionaries thought the conversation was over.
They were wrong.

JUNE CHEPKORIR
Sure Media Agency
Nairobi / Nsukka
December 2025