10th U6+ Consortium of African Universities International Conference

Shortage of manpower and the quest for optimum profit maximization triggered the colonial government’s collaboration with the Christian missions in dispensing and extending the tentacles of western health care to the people. In Ilorin province and Nigeria at large, the missions shouldered the bulk of the colonial medical work and public health programs. For the first time in the history of Ilorin Province, the missionary enterprise presented western medicine as an alternative source of health care to most people, hence the need for its historicity. The paper explores readings from extant literature, oral testimonies and extensive archival documents to juxtapose the impacts of missionary medical work on the well-being of the people of Ilorin Province in the colonial period between 1900 and 1960. It established that, Christian missions’ medical work instigated the training of the native health staff, curtailed the spread of epidemic and endemic diseases, treated scores of sick people, and guaranteed the survival of Ilorin province till the end of formal colonialism and beyond. The study exhibits the missions’ medical work as one of the earliest rationales behind the establishment of other colonial social infrastructures in the districts of Ilorin Province.