The Bahá'í Faith in Niger began during a period of wide scale growth in the religion across Sub-Saharan Africa near the end of its colonial period. The first Bahá'ís arrived in Niger in 1966 and the growth of the religion reached the point of the election of its National Spiritual Assembly in 1975. Following a period of oppression, making the institutions of the Bahá'í Faith illegal in the late 1970s and '80s, the National Assembly was re-elected starting in 1992. The Bahá'í community in Niger has grown mostly in the south-west of the country where they number in the low thousands. The Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated some 5,600 Bahá'ís in 2005.