Abstract
The Catholic Church in Ibadan, Nigeria, maintained limited and highly selective participation in local television during the early 2000s despite its universal mandate to use electronic media for evangelization. This pattern is interpreted as a culturally significant symbolic act within Ibadan’s urban public communication space. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2009 drew on interviews and focus group discussions with Catholic and non-Catholic stakeholders in church and media institutions. Geertz’s symbolic anthropology and Habermas’s public sphere framework guided the analysis.
The findings show that the Church’s selective presence and broader absence from regular broadcasting were shaped by economic constraints, perceptions of televangelism as ojoro, an institutional identity resistant to advertising logic, and conservative leadership. This absence functions as a symbolic act expressing institutional distinctiveness and selective sacredness. Access to religious broadcasting in Ibadan was also found to be structured by economic power, gendered authority, and the spatial organization of media institutions. The study concludes that institutional absence from television constitutes a meaningful form of symbolic communication within a structured urban public sphere. It recommends greater attention to structural access and media inequality in religious broadcasting policy and planning.
Keywords: Televangelism, Ojoro, Catholic Church, Ibadan, Public Sphere, Symbolic Anthropology
Frankline Onuawuchi Maduka, MA
Doctoral Scholar in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Uyo, Nigeria.
franklinemaduka@gmail.com
Titus Nnadozie Onuoha, PhD
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Imo State
University, Owerri, Nigeria.
Henry Obinze Ebo, PhD
Lecturer in the School of General Studies
University of Agriculture and Environmental Studies
Umuagwo,Imo State, Nigeria.
Chinedu Bede Ajuruchi, PhD
Lecturer in the School of General Studies
Imo State, Polytechnic, Omuma, Nigeria.