55 years ago today - Dec 20, 1960

Adewole Ogunmokun writes LDS headquarters requesting that LDS missionaries be sent to Nigeria to officially baptize and formally organize Nigerians who have converted to Mormonism after reading LDS publications. In this unprecedented development in Mormonism, a dozen groups of self-converted Nigerians have already organized, calling themselves "Latter-day Saints" and baptizing themselves as sign of their conversion. Within five years one of these Nigerian groups has "seventy-five congregations with nearly ten thousand baptized adult members and six thousand children," many of whom are living in polygamous families and few of whom know about LDS church's policy of denying priesthood to black Africans. This situation creates a quandary with which LDS leaders struggle for years.

[Source: The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn, [New Mormon History database (http://bit.ly/NMHdatabase)]]