Christian radio ministry in Nigeria expands.

Nigeria (MNN)–Christian programs are now being broadcast in all three of Nigeria’s major languages through a cooperative effort involving HCJB World Radio, In Touch Ministries, the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA) and local radio partners. Broadcasts in Hausa and Yoruba were launched at the beginning of this month, adding to existing broadcasts in Igbo.

Friday, October 3rd, marked the beginning of the weekly Hausa broadcasts that arebbeing put together in cooperation with In Touch Ministries of Atlanta, Georgia.

The programs, produced at the ELWA/ECWA studios in Jos in Nigeria’s Plateau State, air on Kaduna State Radio in the northern part of the country. This station operates on AM and FM, and is in the center of an area with 34 million Hausa-speaking people. HCJB World Radio’s role was to link the producers with the radio stations.

HCJB World Radio’s worldwide broadcasting coordinator said that while Hausa is not a “World by Radio” language, it is “strategically important as it is spoken by a large Muslim population in northern Nigeria.” World by Radio languages are those spoken by at least one million speakers with no access to Christian broadcasts.

On Sunday, Oct. 5, the first weekly programs in Yoruba, also produced at the studios in Jos, began airing in Nigeria. These programs, produced in cooperation with In Touch Ministries, are carried on the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria’s AM station in Ibadan, broadcasting at 657 kHz.

Yoruba speakers, numbering more than 30 million, were the first to hear the gospel in Nigeria a century ago. Yoruba also is not a “World by Radio” language. In both cases ECWA will follow-up and answer listeners’ questions.

This brings to three the number of languages involving HCJB World Radio partners in Nigeria: Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba. Programs in Igbo, spoken by 15 million Nigerians, began airing to the country via shortwave in 2000.