SOURCE:

Faculty: Arts
Department: Religion And Human Relations

CONTRIBUTORS:

Dike, A.A;
Madu, J.E;

ABSTRACT:

Archbishop Joseph Abiodun Adetiloye from Odo-Owa in the present Ekiti State was
the second Nigerian primate after the Most Rev. T.O. Olufosoye. His primacy captured
the attention of the research because, his, could be said to have given or aroused the
interest of the entire Anglicans in Nigeria of what having autonomous province means
in terms of breakthroughs and treading where Angels could not. The purpose of the
research was to appraise, assess or evaluate the administration, policies and
achievements of the primate especially in areas of Evangelism and Mission in order to
advise or guide the church and government aright in the business of administration.
Other works before this appeared to be superfluous in chronicling the achievements
without succinctly and critically analyzing to find out areas of weakness so as to help
both the present and future leadership. Participant-observation methods were used as
primary sources while the past scholarship, both published and unpublished events, text
books were used for secondary sources. The literature review was exhaustively treated
through conceptual, theoretical and empirical studies. The data were interpreted with
historical and missiological approach of analysis. The Archbishop’s declaration of
Decade of evangelism from 1989-1999 as the first black primate of the Anglican
church to do so after the Lambeth conference of 1988, the penetration to the Northern
part of the country in planting churches and making every state capital, a diocese giving
cultural reflection to the liturgy and creation of internal provinces though without
constitutional power etc. were the feat achieved and were all appraised. These
highlights earned Nigerian Anglican church a global commendation. The appraisal also
helped to discover that most of the appointments of the Archbishop Adetiloye were
lopsided possibly due to tribal sentiments which brought about so many crises in his
tenure. However, his managerial ability and financial sourcing and prudence got
commendation. In all, his model of leadership was used to suggest to the church and
government on ways of improvement in their leadership. The implication of the
findings or contribution of the work therefore is for both the church leadership and
government to look beyond the frontiers of their domain in making policies for
posterity. In leadership, the people’s interests should be put above self so that lives
would be given positive meaning both in the church and outside the church.