Bulletin of Ecumenical Theology, vol. 30 (2018), 104-123 IN THE THROES OF DENOMINATIONAL RIVALRY: THE FAILED BID TO ESTABLISH A CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, 1954 - 1956 Nicholas Ibeawuchi Omenka 1 Introduction Catholicism in Nigeria is an important success story of the missionary enterprise in Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This singular achievement owes a great deal to the policy of placing the school in the service of evangelization. 2 Through the medium of formal education, the Catholic missions caught up with, and in large part superseded, various Protestant missions which had seemingly unassailable head start in the present political circumscription called Nigeria. After the Niger Expedition of 1841, the Wesleyan Methodists were the first missionaries to enter the territory today known as Nigeria when Thomas Birch Freeman and William de Graft (a Fanti) arrived in Badagry on 23 September, 1842. This was the effective beginning of Christian missionary enterprise in Nigeria after the abortive efforts of the Portuguese in the 15 th to 18 th Centuries. This pioneer Methodist missionary initiative was followed by other Protestant denominations in quick succession. In the Western Region, the Anglican Church Missionary Society led by Henry Townsend and accompanied by Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the future veteran missionary on the Niger, landed in Badagry on 17 December, 1842. Townsend based his mission in Abeokuta from 1846 to 1867. The Southern Baptist Convention of America under Rev. Thomas Jefferson Bowen began its Yoruba Mission at Ijaye-Orile in 1853. A Catholic mission in the former Western Region was not founded until 1868 when the Society of African Mission operating from Ouidah established a mission in Lagos. 1 Nicholas Ibeawuchi Omenka is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Enugu. He is Professor of Church History at Abia State University, Uturu. 2 For more details, see Nicholas Ibeawuchi Omenka, The School in the Service of Evangelization: The Catholic Educational Impact in Eastern Nigeria, 1886-1950 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989).