ABSTRACT

The gospel message preached by Western missionaries in Nigeria in the 19 th and 20 century can be summarized: “believe in Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” The question is: who is this Jesus Christ, that the people were enjoined to believe? This is a perturbing question to indigenous people hearing this message for the first time, and from a strange person, a westerner. The message was quite foreign and strange to the Tiv. When the Missionaries preached about God and his love for mankind, the Tiv were totally estranged by the gospel. This teaching conveys the idea that Jesus is the saviour. The Tiv understands that, their saviour is their tien. This paper seeks to uncover tien as saviour in Tiv cultural setting. The paper utilized qualitative approach which makes use of secondary sources and participant observation in collection and presentation of data. The paper observed that, the role tien played as saviour in the Tiv socio-cultural context especially to the womenfolk has correlated to the ministry of Jesus Christ who is the saviour of the world. What Christ has done to the world (Christians), cannot exactly equal the role Tien is doing among the Tiv people. Jesus Christ therefore, is the reality of Tiv tien idea. The paper recommends that, tien is an important pedagogical concept in Tiv that could be used as a bridge to presenting Christ to the Tiv people for easy understanding and acceptance.