A steamroller driver left his job after hearing a call. The 1930 Ilesa revival led by Joseph Ayo Babalola

Joseph Ayo Babalola was driving a steamroller for the colonial Public Works Department when, by his own account, he heard a voice calling him to preach. He left the job and the machine behind.

Babalola was born in 1904 in what is now Kwara State, Nigeria. He had little formal education and worked for the Public Works Department on road construction. In 1928 he said he received a divine call to preach the gospel and to pray for the sick. He joined Faith Tabernacle, a prayer group movement that emphasised prayer and divine healing.

Oke Ooye

In 1930, Babalola began preaching at Oke Ooye in Ilesa, in present-day Osun State. Crowds came from across Yorubaland and beyond. Accounts of the revival describe mass conversions, people bringing out charms and idols to be burned, and many reports of healing. The revival spread to other towns and lasted months.

Babalola baptised converts in water from a stream at Oke Ooye and preached against traditional religious practices and the use of charms. The revival drew both churchgoers and people with no church background.

Colonial concern

The colonial authorities and some mission churches were uneasy with the size and fervour of the crowds. Babalola’s emphasis on healing through prayer, rather than medicine, drew criticism, and he faced official scrutiny.

Christ Apostolic Church

The revival fed into a group of Nigerian churches that emphasised prayer, known as Aladura, from the Yoruba word for “prayer people”. After links with the Apostolic Church of Britain and a later split, the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) was established in the early 1940s as an indigenous Pentecostal church, with Babalola as its spiritual leader.

The CAC grew into one of the largest indigenous churches in Nigeria, with branches across Africa, Europe and North America.

Ikeji Arakeji

Babalola died in 1959. The prayer ground associated with him at Ikeji Arakeji, in Osun State, attracts large gatherings, and his birthplace and Oke Ooye in Ilesa are places of pilgrimage for CAC members.

Legacy

Babalola is seen as a forerunner of Nigerian Pentecostalism, which has since grown into some of the largest churches in the world. His focus on prayer, fasting and healing shaped the style of many Nigerian churches.

The steamroller he walked away from became part of the story. CAC members still tell it as the moment one kind of road building ended and another began.