Walter R. Miller

Walter Miller (r) with Emir of Zaria Aliyu (reigned: 1903–1920)

Walter Richard Samuel Miller (1872–27 August 1952) was a British missionary active in Nigeria during the first half of the 20th century. He was the main author of the first complete translation of the Bible into Hausa.

Biography

Walter Richard Samuel Miller was born in 1872 in Devonshire, United Kingdom. Born into an Anglican family, he set his sights on a life as a missionary from an early age, studying Arabic and Hausa in Cairo and then Tripoli with a view to evangelising northern Nigeria. A member of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), he arrived in Lagos at Christmas 1899 and travelled to Kano, but the emir of that city would not allow Christian missionaries to settle there. He finally settled in Zaria in 1902 with another missionary, George Bargery. His sister Ethel Miller joined him some time later. He opened a dispensary and a school.

In 1929, the new emir asked the Christian mission to leave Zaria for Wusasa. Miller gradually translated the Bible into Hausa, which was published in full in that language for the first time in 1932. He left the CMS afterward and returned to England permanently in 1939. However, he soon came back to Nigeria, settling permanently in Bukuru, a tin-mining city south of Jos in Plateau Province (now Plateau State). There, he devoted himself to teaching Hausa and writing until his death on 27 August 1952 at the age of 80. He was buried at St Piran's Cemetery in Jos.

Miller was fondly remembered in Northern Nigeria, even among Muslim elites. One of them, the Hausa writer Abubakar Imam, wrote a tribute titled Likita Mila ("Dr. Miller").

Works

• W. R. S. Miller, Walter Miller: An Autobiography 1872-1952, London, CMS, 1952
• W. R. S. Miller, Success in Nigeria? Assets and Possibilities, London: United Society for Christian Literature / Redhill: Lutterworth Press, 1948
• W. R. S. Miller, Have We Failed in Nigeria?, London, 1947
• W. R. S. Miller, Reflections of a Pioneer, London, CMS, 1936