Churchmen in Britain had been influential in…

Churchmen in Britain had been influential in the drive to abolish the slave trade, but significant missionary activity had been renewed only in the 1840s and had been confined for some time to the area between Lagos and Ibadan.

The first missions there had been opened by the Church of England's Church Missionary Society (CMS).

They were followed by other Protestant denominations from Britain, Canada, and the United States and in the 1860s by Roman Catholic religious orders.

Protestant missionaries tend to divide the country into spheres of activity to avoid competition with each other, and Catholic missions similarly avoid duplication of effort among the several religious orders working  here.

Catholic missionaries are particularly active among the Igbo, the CMS among the Yoruba.