JOSUGA: JOS JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES

This study undertakes a philosophical exploration of Garrick Sokari Braide’s prophetic ministry through the lens of African metaphysics and symbolic representation. As a charismatic prophet and spiritual leader in early 20th-century Nigeria, Braide’s movement emerged as both a religious revival and a metaphysical protest against colonial and ecclesiastical dominations. Central to his ministry were symbols—ritual objects, healing acts, spiritual visions—that mediated divine presence and invoked African cosmological structures. This study interrogates how such symbols, grounded in indigenous metaphysical concepts like vital force, ancestral agency, and spiritual causality, served not only as instruments of communication but as ontological realities within African thought. By bridging Christian prophetic narratives with African semiotic systems, Braide reframed spiritual authority and revelation in ways that affirmed local epistemologies. Drawing from African philosophy, religious studies, and historical theology, this paper argues that Braide’s prophetic symbolism was not merely expressive but metaphysically constitutive redefining being, power, and divine presence in an African Christian worldview. In doing so, the work contributes to contemporary debates on religious hybridity, symbolic ontology, and the enduring resonance of African metaphysical imagination in shaping prophetic identity. 

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