NIAMEY, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE OF. - In French West Africa, it was erected on 28 April 1942 from territories detached from the apostolic vicariates of Dahomey, now Ouidah, Ouagadougou, Khartoum and Foumban and from the apostolic prefecture of Jos and Kaduna, and entrusted to the Society for African Missions. Its area was 1,360,000 sq. km. with a population of 2,100,000 inhabitants, of whom in 1942 only 780 were Catholics, assisted by seven missionaries.
The inhabitants of the regions north of the Niger were predominantly Muslim and those to the south pagan. The size of the territory required a division, all the more so because Muslim propaganda was becoming ever more active and Protestant propaganda ever more threatening. For this reason in 1946 some Redemptorist fathers went into the northern zone and settled at Zinder, Niamey and Fada. In the meantime the French Government re-established the Colony of Upper Volta, and so the apostolic prefecture of N. came to include territories belonging to the colony of Niger, Dahomey and Upper Volta.
On 13 May 1948 the territory was divided, and there remained to the prefecture of N. the whole territory of the colony of Niger and the district of Fada-Ngourma which is part of the colony of Upper Volta. The remaining territory formed the apostolic prefecture of Parakou (v.). The area of the apostolic prefecture of N. is about 1,294,000 sq. km. with a population of about 2,200,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,700,280 are Muslims and 495,000 pagans. Catholics number about 3,700, assisted by 12 Redemptorist missionaries, to whom the prefecture has been entrusted, and by 9 sisters. Catechists 18, primary stations 5, secondary stations 36; elementary schools 3. There are some associations of charity and of Catholic Action.
Bibliography2 works
Saverio Paventi