Braide was born about 1882 of poor non-Christian parents. About 1890, he enrolled and later learnt to read and write at the Sunday school of St Andrews Anglican Church, Bakana, a Kalabari village in the riverine Niger Delta of Nigeria. He was baptized on 23 January 1910, had his confirmation in 1912, and thereafter became a lay preacher.
About 1912, claiming that God had commissioned him, he preached publicly at Bakana. He demanded confession of sins and the destruction of idols and charms as steps to becoming a Christian. Besides, he stipulated strict Sunday observances, encouraged regular prayers and fasting, and preached abstinence from alcoholic beverages, a rampant social evil.
Within a year, Braide had been accepted as a prophet, and his healing miracles confirmed this claim. From 1915, he visited other Kalabari towns conducting evangelistic campaigns and winning hundreds of converts into the Anglican churches. His call on the people to seek self-determination reawakened their hope of a truly indigenous church leadership. In 1915, he took the title Elijah II, and in the following year appointed evangelists, delegated healing power to them, and sent them out into other towns.
Braide’s preaching stimulated a revival that peaked in February 1916, when James Johnson, the Diocesan Bishop took disciplinary actions against Braide and the clergy who supported him. Unable to contain the popular revolt that followed, Johnson appealed to the British colonial administration, and Braide was arrested in March 1916. Branded as a political agitator because his preaching against alcohol, an economic commodity, had reduced government revenues, he was tried and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. Further charges brought in November culminated in additional sentences.
Dissatisfied with the hypocrisy of the Anglican Church, Braide’s followers about 1917 constituted themselves into the independent Christ Army Church. After his release from prison, Braide died of an illness on 15 November 1918.
Braide’s revival was a challenge to a western Christianity that made church membership a long and tortuous journey of instructions in the catechisms and learning European manners. Conversely, Braide promoted a contextualized Christianity that was practical, while his healing and prophetic activities addressed some of the felt needs of the people, and partly stimulated Kalabari nationalism.
