Sisters of Mercy first arrived in northern Nigeria in the town of Yola (Adamawa State) in October 1969. They came from Dungarvan, Co. Waterford (Ireland). Additional sisters moved from Strabane, Co. Tyrone (Ireland) to Minna, Niger State, in 1975, and from the Armagh Diocese (Ireland) to Lagos in 1986. The ministries in which the initial Sisters of Mercy were engaged were secondary education, charismatic renewal, catechist training, work with women, visitation (home, hospital, and prison), and running a medical clinic.

Today, Sisters of Mercy minister in Minna and Yola, having withdrawn from Bare in 1990 and from Lagos in 1998. The various Mercy communities formed one group in 1993 and chose to be attached to the Northern Province of the Congregation of Sisters of Mercy (Ireland) when that congregation was formed in 1994.

Ministries of Sisters of Mercy in Nigeria include primary school education; the education and development of women; formation ministry; spirituality; catechetics; cosmology/care of the earth; visitation of those in prison, in a leprosarium, and in hospitals; work with widows’ associations; youth ministry; ministries with parishes and small Christian communities; staffing a justice desk.

The Sisters of Mercy direct the Rahama Centre for Women in Yola which focuses on the education and development of women and the Sabon Rayuwa Ecological Training Centre which provides a model of compassionate, earth-friendly and hospitable living grounded in the bio-region and underpinned by a theology of right relationship with God, self, others, and the cosmos.

All of the Sisters of Mercy in Nigeria are involved in the care of Earth.