The top 10 Nigerian gospel songs

What are the top 10 Nigerian gospel songs? Measured on chart performance and streaming rather than taste: "Way Maker" by Sinach, "No Turning Back II" by Gaise Baba and Lawrence Oyor, "Olorun Agbaye (You Are Mighty)" by Nathaniel Bassey, "Excess Love" by Mercy Chinwo, "Too Faithful" by Moses Bliss, "B'Ola (Honour)" by Sunmisola Agbebi, "Favour" by Lawrence Oyor, "Worthy of My Praise" by Dunsin Oyekan, "Jireh (My Provider)" by Limoblaze, Lecrae and Happi, and "Eze Abata" by Chinyere Udoma.

Every list like this one you will find online is somebody's preference. The top-ranking one carries its own disclaimer that it is "just base on random selections from spotify." A national newspaper's version discloses no method at all. So here is the method first, then the songs.

How this list was built

TurnTable Charts is Nigeria's industry-standard chart. It launched in 2020, and the Official Nigeria Top 100 followed on 11 July 2022. It tracks Friday to Thursday, publishes on Mondays at 6pm WAT, and weights the Top 100 as 50% streaming and 50% radio airplay. Streaming comes from Audiomack, Boomplay, YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer and Spotify; airplay from Radiomonitor across more than fifty Nigerian stations.

Within the streaming half, plays are tiered rather than counted flat: a paid subscription stream is worth 1.0, a freemium stream 0.75, an ad-supported video stream 0.66, an ad-supported stream 0.5.

TurnTable does not run a live weekly gospel chart. Gospel is one of eight genre rankings it publishes editorially. The most recent covers December 2024 to November 2025 and was published on 18 January 2026:

#	Song	Artist	Streams	Radio impressions
1	No Turning Back II	Gaise Baba & Lawrence Oyor	22.8m	205m
2	Favour	Lawrence Oyor	15m	91.9m
3	We Will Be Many	Sounds of Salem ft. Lawrence Oyor & Moses Akoh	13.4m	103m
4	Eze Abata	Chinyere Udoma	13.2m	no data
5	Oluwatosin	TKeyz & SteveHills	1.2m	42.3m
6	Promise Keeper	Sounds of Salem & Pst. Oche Ogbe	11.2m	no data
7	My God	BBO	8.4m	no data
8	E Ti Tobi To (Live)	EmmaOMG ft. Pelumi Deborah, BBO & The Ohemge Choir	8.1m	2.3m
9	Zam	Adazion IJ	5.4m	no data
10	We Move	Mercy Chinwo	5.2m	no data

Look at number five. "Oluwatosin" has 1.2 million streams and 42.3 million radio impressions, eleven times fewer streams than the song directly above it, and it still outranks five songs that all out-stream it. That is the 50/50 weighting doing exactly what it is designed to do, and it is a useful corrective: Nigerian gospel lives on radio at least as much as on Spotify, and lists built on streaming alone miss half the country.

That annual ranking is a twelve-month snapshot. The list below is broader: it weighs chart records, streaming totals and how long a song has stayed in use, which is why it is not the same list.

Streaming figures are from kworb.net, which aggregates Spotify's own published counts, as of 22–25 August 2026, or from Spotify artist pages retrieved on 31 August 2026. YouTube counts are given as reported by a named source on a named date, never as a live figure.

1Way Maker · Sinach (2015)

The most consequential gospel song Nigeria has produced, and it is not close.

Sinach, Osinachi Kalu Okoro Egbu, wrote it on a flight. "It was a long flight. I was having a conversation with the Lord. So I was able to write down the things he was talking to me about." Released 30 May 2015 on Way Maker (Live), produced by Mayo MuziQ; video directed by Ose Iria, out 30 December 2015.

What followed has no parallel in African gospel:

First African artist to top Billboard's Christian Songwriters chart, from March 2020, held for twelve consecutive weeks
Song of the Year at the 51st GMA Dove Awards, October 2020, the first Nigerian gospel artist to win one
BMI Christian Song of the Year, August 2021
No. 1 on the CCLI chart of songs used in US churches from June 2020, held through December, making it the most-sung church song in America that year
Translated into more than fifty languages
200 million YouTube views as reported by GMusicPlus on 6 June 2022; 100 million as reported by allAfrica in March 2019
Gold certification from RISA in South Africa for the album, November 2016

Now the detail almost everyone misses. Sinach's own recording never charted on Billboard's Hot Christian Songs. The covers did. Michael W. Smith's version reached No. 3, Leeland's entered at No. 9, and on the chart dated 11 April 2020 two versions of the same song sat in the top ten simultaneously, reported as the first time in that chart's history.

Her Spotify profile is modest by Afrobeats standards: 374,610 monthly listeners when I checked on 31 August 2026.

So the song did not travel the way Nigerian music usually travels. It went out through congregations singing it (through church licensing, choir sheets and other people's recordings), and it reached further than any marketing budget would have taken it.

I didn't lobby for it, I didn't promote it to be like that. It was the Lord that put it there.

That is a different export route than Afrobeats uses, and it is worth Nigerian gospel understanding, because it is the one that works.

2No Turning Back II · Gaise Baba & Lawrence Oyor (2025)

Released 16 May 2025. In May it peaked at No. 4 on the Official Nigeria Top 100, the highest-charting gospel song in the chart's history.

By TurnTable's own account it drew 3.26 million on-demand streams in its peak week, ranking No. 2 on the streaming chart, alongside 16.7 million radio impressions. Over the December 2024 to November 2025 period TurnTable logged 22.8 million streams and 205 million radio impressions.

It was YouTube's most-watched Nigerian music video of 2025, any genre, with over 41 million views inside six months of release, on YouTube's own year-end Nigeria ranking. It passed 50 million views 278 days after release.

One clarification, because two sources conflict. TurnTable's own reporting has described the previous benchmark as Davido and the Sunday Service Choir's "Stand Strong" at No. 5, and elsewhere at No. 6. The likely explanation is that "Stand Strong" was released in May 2022, before the Official Nigeria Top 100 launched that July, so it charted on the predecessor Top 50, two different charts being compared. Either way, "Stand Strong" is Afropop with a gospel choir rather than a gospel record, which arguably makes "No Turning Back II" the first outright gospel song to reach those heights.

Gaise Baba (born Akinade Ibuoye, 5 August 1986) studied Economics at Obafemi Awolowo University and music business at Berklee. He submitted the song for Grammy consideration in 2026 and publicly criticised The Headies over its nominations, arguing faith-based music should compete on merit rather than in a side category. On the numbers, he has a case.

3Olorun Agbaye (You Are Mighty) · Nathaniel Bassey

37,840,274 Spotify streams, the most-streamed track by the most-streamed Nigerian gospel artist. Bassey had 1,604,130 monthly listeners on 31 August 2026, higher than any other artist in this field.

His catalogue is deep enough that picking one song is slightly arbitrary. "Adonai" has 25.7 million, "You Are God" 19.8 million, "Imela", the 2014 song most people would name first, 18.9 million.

A note on a figure you will see repeated: Bassey was reported to have passed 500 million Spotify streams in July 2026, following an earlier report of 400 million in November 2025. Neither report cites Spotify. kworb's aggregation of Spotify's published counts had him at 450,410,067 on 25 August 2026. The gap is probably a broader "all credits" basket against a narrower song list, but I cannot resolve it, so I will not print 500 million as fact.

The bigger story is not streaming anyway. The Hallelujah Challenge, which Bassey began on 1 June 2017 as a thirty-day midnight prayer and worship livestream, drew over 70,000 participants in a single session that first year, plus 90,000 more on Facebook, and pulled in Tiwa Savage, D'banj, Don Jazzy and Funke Akindele. By day 15 of the October 2025 edition it drew over 1.2 million viewers in one midnight session, across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Seventy thousand to 1.2 million in eight years. Bassey has also declined to monetise the broadcast.

4Excess Love · Mercy Chinwo (2018)

Released 20 February 2018 on The Cross: My Gaze. Passed 100 million YouTube views as reported by SelahAfrik on 10 July 2023, and won Africa Gospel Song of the Year at the 2019 Africa Gospel Awards Festival in Ghana.

Chinwo won the second season of Nigerian Idol in 2012, and "Excess Love" is the record that made her the most recognisable woman in Nigerian gospel. She was still in TurnTable's gospel top ten for the 2024–25 year with "We Move."

5Too Faithful · Moses Bliss (2021)

29,285,617 Spotify streams, his most-played track, from an album released in May 2021. It passed 100 million YouTube views as reported by the Guardian Nigeria on 6 August 2026.

His collaboration "Your love" with the American worship singer Chandler Moore has 10.6 million Spotify plays, one of the more successful Nigeria–US gospel crossings, and a sign of where the traffic is starting to go in both directions.

6B'Ola (Honour) · Sunmisola Agbebi

40,541,173 Spotify streams, and 1,344,570 monthly listeners, the biggest streaming figure of any single song on this list.

Her January 2026 duet with Yinka Okeleye, "Amioluwa," has had more coverage, but at 5.7 million plays it is a fraction the size. "B'Ola" is the record that built the audience.

7Favour · Lawrence Oyor

No. 2 on TurnTable's gospel ranking for December 2024 to November 2025, with 15 million streams and 91.9 million radio impressions.

Oyor appears three times in that year's top three: his own song, "No Turning Back II" with Gaise Baba, and "We Will Be Many" with Sounds of Salem and Moses Akoh. No other artist in Nigerian gospel has had a year like it, and his spontaneous, prayer-room style is a long way from the polished Afro-gospel single, which makes the chart performance more interesting rather than less.

8Worthy of My Praise · Dunsin Oyekan

20,276,061 Spotify streams; 985,967 monthly listeners. "Undignified (Excuse Me)" has 10.3 million and "No Me Without You" 9.4 million.

A note on titles, since they circulate wrongly: the songs are "Fragrance to Fire" and "The Anthem" featuring Pastor Jerry Eze. There is no Dunsin Oyekan song called "The Fragrance" or "Anthem of the Lamb," whatever the listicles say.

9Jireh (My Provider) · Limoblaze, Lecrae & Happi (2022)

The clearest evidence that Nigerian gospel now travels as pop rather than only as worship. It reached No. 28 on Billboard's Hot Christian Songs, No. 11 on Top Gospel Songs and No. 26 on US Afrobeats Songs, with Headies and Stellar Awards nominations.

Limoblaze signed to Reach Records in October 2022, the label's first signee based outside the United States.

10Eze Abata · Chinyere Udoma

Fourth on TurnTable's gospel ranking for 2024–25 with 13.2 million streams, and the entry that keeps this list honest.

Udoma is an Igbo gospel veteran working in a tradition (church-rooted, indigenous-language, largely outside the Lagos single-release economy) that carries enormous audiences and almost no press coverage. She outranked far better-publicised records on measured streams. Any list of Nigerian gospel built only on what gets written about would miss her entirely, which is a good argument for building lists on data.

Who is the most successful gospel artist in Nigeria?

By international reach and honours, Sinach. No other Nigerian gospel artist has topped a Billboard chart, won a Dove Award and a BMI Song of the Year, or had a song sung across the American church for a year.

By domestic streaming, Nathaniel Bassey, 1.6 million monthly Spotify listeners and over 450 million streams, ahead of everyone else in the genre.

By chart record, Gaise Baba, who took a gospel song higher on the Official Nigeria Top 100 than it has ever been.

By sheer gathered audience, Bassey again. A midnight prayer broadcast that pulls 1.2 million people in one session is a scale of engagement no streaming figure captures.

Two artists this list cannot rank properly

Tope Alabi has recorded soundtracks for more than 350 Yoruba films and has been releasing since around 2000. Frank Edwards won three Nigeria Gospel Music Awards in 2012 and his "Okaka" video dates from February 2014. Both are genuinely major figures.

Neither has the public chart and streaming documentation that the artists above have. Tope Alabi does appear in recent chart data ("ORO," her collaboration with BBO, debuted at No. 84 on the Official Nigeria Top 100 with 515,000 streams), but that is one data point against a twenty-five-year career.

I would rather say that than rank them on numbers I cannot show you. The gap says something real: Nigerian gospel's most established artists built their audiences before the systems that now measure audiences existed, and the charts have not caught up with them.

Is Nigerian gospel growing?

Sharply, and the best figure comes from Spotify itself.

Since Spotify launched in Nigeria in 2021, gospel and praise has grown 5,499%: the second fastest-growing genre on the platform in the country, behind only amapiano at 10,330%.

Separately, Spotify data given to BusinessDay in March 2024 showed gospel streams among Nigerian Gen Z listeners rose 1,228% between 2022 and 2024, with Christian podcast streams up 482%, over 140,000 gospel playlists created by young listeners, and peak listening on Sunday mornings between 6am and 10am.

The wider market grew with it. Nigerian artists earned over ₦60 billion through Spotify in 2025 across 30.3 billion streams; though that naira figure needs reading carefully, since the currency devalued heavily across the same period and the dollar equivalent grew far less.

What I could not verify

YouTube view counts could not be checked live, so every one above is attributed to a named source on a named date and will now be out of date. Treat them as milestones, not current totals.

TurnTable publishes no live weekly gospel chart; the December 2024 to November 2025 ranking is the most recent published, and any list drawing on it is a year behind by definition.

I found no dated report of YouTube figures for "Imela," "Onise Iyanu," "Olowogbogboro," "Okaka," or any Tope Alabi or Dunsin Oyekan track. Nathaniel Bassey's 500 million Spotify milestone is reported without a data source and conflicts with the aggregated count. And TurnTable's own two articles disagree on where "Stand Strong" peaked.

I am Nigerian-born and I live in London, and the thing I keep coming back to in this list is the export route. Sinach did not have a Western label. She had a song churches could sing, and churches carried it to America.

DNA is afrobeat, and so is Padre. DNA came out of a line a group of students at my first university used instead of hello, you carry God on your inside, which I sat on for about twenty years before I did anything with it. Then I wrote it on a flight, which is where Sinach wrote hers.

Official video2:37

DNA

4K. A student greeting taken literally, set to afrobeat.

Chart and streaming figures checked 31 August 2026. This piece is revisited each year; the date at the top of the page is the last time it was.