In the context of widening socio-economic inequalities, weakened state institutions, and growing conditions of global precarity, Nigerian Neo-Pentecostalism has emerged as a significant arena for negotiating religious authority, social mobility, and communal welfare. Central to this development is the emergence of the "Big Man of God," whose authority is increasingly embodied through charisma, institutional expansion, philanthropy, public visibility, and symbolic influence. Existing scholarship has largely explained this phenomenon through prosperity theology, globalization, media culture, and religious entrepreneurship, paying insufficient attention to the enduring influence of indigenous African conceptions of leadership and moral authority. This paper argues that the contemporary Neo-Pentecostal leader represents a culturally translated reinvention of the traditional African "big man," whose legitimacy historically rested upon communal responsibility, patronage, moral integrity, and public recognition. Drawing on historical analysis and the indigenous socio-cultural traditions of the Igbo, Yoruba, and Ikwerre peoples, the study employs Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), complemented by Sanneh's Translation Principle, Bourdieu's concept of symbolic capital, and Wariboko's Pentecostal economy, to examine how indigenous notions of honour, prestige, and leadership have been reconfigured within Nigeria's contemporary religious economy. The paper demonstrates that the "Big Man of God" is not merely a product of prosperity theology but a culturally intelligible institution through which indigenous moral economies continue to shape Neo-Pentecostal responses to structural inequalities, public authority, and the lived realities of global precarity in contemporary Africa.
