Nigerian Conflict and Chaos

By Thomas Lambrecht

This has been a difficult summer for the Good News office. Hurricane Beryl caused two weeks of power outages, preventing us from working in the office or accomplishing much of anything. Technical issues caused our website to go down, leaving some people to believe we had gone out of business (we have not!). Then our email failed to work for several days. Everything is in the process of being fixed, and we are back up and running again. We are resuming our regular schedule of Perspective e-newsletters.

As some would say, this chaos is a “first-world problem,” in that most of the world is not so dependent upon electricity or technology as we are in the U.S. The United Methodist Church of Nigeria (UMCN) has experienced a fair amount of chaos this summer, as well, and its chaos is much more damaging.

As reported by the Global Methodist Church, the four annual conferences of UMCN have voted unanimously to withdraw from The United Methodist Church and join the Global Methodist Church. In the wake of that decision, Bishop John Wesley Yohanna resigned from the UM Church and was received as a bishop of the GM Church. Presidents pro tempore were appointed for the four annual conferences, and they have begun to operate as annual conferences of the GM Church.

That paragraph makes this transition sound simple and easy, but it was anything but.

As we and others have reported in the past, the Nigerian church has been riven with conflict since 2012, when Bishop Yohanna was elected bishop. One faction of the church refused to accept him as their bishop and withdrew from the UM Church to establish their own independent Methodist church. Repeated attempts at reconciliation over the years have been unsuccessful.

Several years ago, a key leader in the UMCN, Ande Emmanuel, began to resist the authority of Bishop Yohanna. He, too, has gathered a faction of supporters within the church and attempts to portray his group as the true UM Church in Nigeria. According to sources in Nigeria, there are allegations that Emmanuel has fomented violence against fellow church members by hiring “thugs” to attack and beat persons belonging to the mainstream Yohanna part of the church, disrupting worship services and other church activities. Emmanuel filed lawsuits in court attempting to take over the property of the UMCN.

Emmanuel filed complaints against Yohanna through the church accountability process, and Yohanna filed complaints against Emmanuel and his group. Those complaints were supposedly resolved by a Just Resolution last year agreed to by all parties. However, the terms of the agreement appear not to have been fully implemented. Each side accuses the other of failing to live up to the terms of the agreement.

The conflict came to a head around the time of the 2024 General Conference, when Emmanuel became a frequent speaker on the floor of the conference advocating for regionalization, which the bulk of the Nigerian church opposes. When Emmanuel and other delegates returned to Nigeria, they were greeted by protesters opposing regionalization and what they characterized as the LGBTQ+ agenda. Emmanuel’s group engaged in counter protests, and the threat of violence caused the local government in one city to close all United Methodist churches for a month to allow things to cool off.

Meanwhile, the court ruled that Emmanuel’s lawsuit was without merit, dismissed the lawsuit, and fined Emmanuel for bringing the suit. Many Nigerian members unhappy with the General Conference actions agitated for the UMCN to show its opposition to those actions.

Bishop John Schol (Greater New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania) was sent to Nigeria in June to attempt to negotiate a resolution of the conflict between Emmanuel and Yohanna and their groups. Instead, Schol reportedly got an earful from the annual conference cabinets voicing their displeasure at the General Conference actions. He was unable to fulfill his mission of reconciliation and was apparently escorted to the airport for his own security.

Bishop Yohanna had called special sessions of the four Nigerian annual conferences. The four conferences voted unanimously to exit The United Methodist Church with all their properties to join the Global Methodist Church. Bishop Yohanna and nearly all the district superintendents of the four conferences then resigned from the UM Church to become Global Methodist.

The UM Council of Bishops then appointed Bishops Schol, Nhiwatiwa (Zimbabwe), and Streiff (Southern Europe, retired) to serve as a team of interim bishops in Nigeria. In their communication, the bishops allege the special annual conference sessions were not held according to the Discipline. “There are reports that Annual Conferences were held, and Conferences voted to leave The United Methodist Church. This is not true. There were no Conference Sessions convened according to our Book of Discipline, and most delegates/conference members were not invited to these gatherings.”

Reports on the ground and official communications from UMCN leaders, including a press conference held by Bishop Yohanna, state that the conference sessions were held and that they did take action to withdraw. It is probable that annual conference members belonging to Emmanuel’s group may not have been included in the conferences, since they had renounced the authority of Bishop Yohanna. But reports on the ground indicate at least two of the conferences had over 80 percent attendance.

The bishops’ letter also alleges that “a group of United Methodists were [sic] imprisoned due to complaints by the former cabinet and leaders because they are committed to staying with The United Methodist Church.” However, a church leader identified with the GM Church reported on Tuesday, “Four members of Sunkani District are in detention yesterday morning. Two of them are GMC members while two are UMCN members. They were in detention due to what happened in Sunkani District on Sunday, August 4, that led to the closure of our Church. [This alludes to the threat of violence I mentioned above that caused the government to close the churches for a time.] The DS and the Church secretary of Sunkani District are our GMC members who were in detention along with two members of the UMCN.”

Information received on Wednesday indicated that the members were released from detention. Based on this report, the detention was due to the threat of violent altercation, rather than because some members wanted to remain in the UM Church. Indeed, two of the four detainees were GM Church leaders, not those wanting to remain in the UM Church.

In the midst of this chaotic situation, the bulk of the Nigerian church is moving to the GM Church. Some individual congregations and pastors have yet to decide which way they want to move. Out of a church that most recently reported 600,000 members, several hundred thousand of them are moving to the GM Church. It will be a number of months until the dust settles and we know for sure what proportion of the UMCN is now GMC.

This move of Nigeria is significant. It was done according to the laws of Nigeria, rather than by any process that is in the Discipline. While the General Conference closed the door on any official disaffiliation pathways in the UM Church, legal realities in many countries could still allow disaffiliation by annual conferences.

The members of Nigeria join a rapidly growing GM Church in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Tanzania, Kenya-Ethiopia (which is also growing dramatically), and South Africa. A number of other countries are poised to inaugurate the GM Church, as well, with other countries moving toward that goal. It appears that only a handful of the African countries that have a United Methodist presence do not already have a movement to establish the GM Church in their country. That means 20 or more African countries may have GM conferences in the next year or so.

The Global Methodist Church is truly growing as a global movement of the Holy Spirit. Many are looking forward to the convening General Conference September 20-26 in Costa Rica as a seminal moment in reinforcing the solid foundations for this new denomination.

Thomas Lambrecht is a ​​​​​​​Global Methodist clergyperson and vice president of Good News. Photo: Nigeria Area Bishop John Wesley Yohanna says a prayer alongside members of his cabinet during a gathering of United Methodists from the North East and Southern Nigeria annual conferences on July 24 at McBride United Methodist Church in Jalingo. Yohanna announced July 29 that he has left The United Methodist Church. Photo by Ramson Danjuma, communications director for the North East Nigeria Conference (via United Methodist News).