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Monday, April 20, 2026
Nigeria.
NIGERIA: MODERN-DAY ‘JOB’ PERSEVERES DESPITE TRAUMATIC LOSS.
Posted: 2nd January 2025(Updated: 2nd January 2025)
Modern-day ‘Job’ perseveres despite traumatic loss.
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How do you carry on after losing your wife, parents and all but one of your children – not to mention your home and all your possessions – in one brutal attack on your community?
It doesn’t bear thinking about, and thankfully we in the UK do not face that threat. However, it is all too common in northern and central Nigeria where for two decades Islamist terrorists such as Boko Haram and now more recently militant Fulani herdsmen have been terrorising Christians.
For Luka Abba, a Christian from the southern part of Kaduna state in northwest Nigeria there is no choice but to keep going for the sake of his one surviving child, Magnificent, who is living with the physical trauma of having been shot in the mouth.
Somehow the boy survived the raid in February 2022 in which his siblings, mother and grandparents were killed but he lives with the consequences of the violence: when we met him he was awaiting further surgery. (At the time of writing, our partner had been trying to secure the necessary treatment but it is either too expensive or not easily available in Nigeria.)
‘The attack started on my house!’
Luka, a member of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) and a resident of Kagoro village in the Kaura local government area, described what happened that evening in February 2022; how he had gone for a stroll with others from the congregation when the attack occurred.
‘We went out and left our families at home but before we knew it we started hearing gunshots. When we called home we heard that it was my community that was under attack – and the attack had started on my house!
‘Fulani herdsmen came and surrounded our community with their pick-up trucks and motorbikes. They surrounded my compound and started firing. (We stay in the same compound with different houses as an extended family.) They killed my wife and my children, burnt my father to ashes and killed my mother.
‘And then destroyed everything because I was into farming – ginger farming production.’
Luka is a major ginger grower in the community and even provided loans to empower local small business owners.
When he arrived home he discovered exactly what had happened to his family. Only Magnificent had survived but he was in desperate need of medical attention.
Luka picked up his son and carried him on his back to the nearest clinic – an ECWA dispensary where the boy received first aid – but ‘his facial injuries were beyond what they could medically handle’.
While there Luka was told that animals had started to tamper with the dead bodies of his family, which he had had to leave in the village. Eventually he was able to find someone to help him move the corpses to a hospital mortuary.
Magnificent remains under strict medical supervisionMeanwhile Magnificent was referred to the national hospital in the capital, Abuja, but medical staff there said that his injuries were too severe and could not be treated in Nigeria.
‘They asked if I had money to fly out with the boy but I had nothing. Everything had been destroyed. Even now I haven’t reactivated my bank accounts because all my documents and information were burnt. I didn’t have enough money.
‘As God would have it, though, I managed to get the money and we saw the consultant who said we couldn’t stay in the national hospital because it was too expensive. He knew that I had been through a lot and promised to look for another hospital in his capacity as a consultant.’
Eventually he referred Magnificent to the Federal Medical Centre in Nasarawa state, where the surgery took place. The doctor was able to carry out the operation by connecting online for guidance from colleagues overseas.
Today Magnificent remains under strict medical supervision. He has facial disfigurement and his mouth has to be wired up until there has been sufficient healing. If the wires cannot be removed they will need to be serviced and cleaned regularly to prevent infection.
‘Recently we went back for a check-up and they asked us to prepare so they can perform [more] surgery. There were so many complications including the skin around his mouth being deformed.’
‘Everybody was traumatised’
On top of having to care for his son, Luka is dealing with his own trauma from that terrible night in which a number of communities were attacked and around 30 people killed. Thankfully Release International’s partner, Stefanos Foundation, has been able to help him practically with clothing, food and accommodation as well as providing trauma counselling.
As I speak to Luka it’s clear that there is no doubt in his mind that the Fulani attacks were religiously motivated.
‘It is an Islamic agenda because it is only Christians who were killed and churches burnt. If they find a Muslim house within the community they will not touch it – and they will not touch any of their families. They allow the Muslims to leave and attack the Christians.
‘They claim that the land in the communities is for them to graze their cows on so they are asking the farmers to leave the communities for them to be grazing there, which of course the people and the communities don’t accept.’
After the attack on Kagoro, the villagers fled to a camp for the internally displaced. ‘Everybody was traumatised,’ said Luka.
Like other believers the events of that night had a huge impact on his faith; he questioned how God could have allowed this to happen to His children.
‘I began to wonder but the story that kept me, that helped me the most, was the story of Job, and I later named myself “Job of the Millennium” because of what happened to me. I came to a point where I reminded myself that I didn’t come into this world with anything, but, if I can touch anyone’s life while I am here and help them, that is what I must do. I believe that is why God spared my life.’
Inevitably Luka struggles with his feelings towards those responsible for killing his wife, Nancy, his children Sofia and Hope and his parents as well as injuring Magnificent, who was six years old at the time.
‘The pain is there. Left to myself and if I did not have a faith I would say these people should be destroyed – they are not worthy to live because they are like evil monsters. But as a Christian who reads the Bible I have to turn to Scripture which helps me overcome these thoughts. What I tell myself is: “May the will of God be done over their lives because I can’t give God direction over that.”’
He asks for prayer that God would intervene in Nigeria: ‘Pray about what we are facing and passing through in Nigeria – and for me and my surviving son personally. Pray that God provides where there is no way for us to take care of our loved ones, and that God would restore peace to the country.’
All photos © Release International 2025
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Dr Kiflu.
Arrest and background.
Dr Kiflu Gebremeskel, the chair of the Eritrean Evangelical Alliance, senior pastor and leading figure in the Full Gospel Church, has been imprisoned since May 2004. He was arrested in an early morning raid on his home in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. Dr Kiflu was a mathematics lecturer who was faculty head in the University of Asmara until 1999, when he became a full-time pastor. He has never been charged with a crime or brought before a court. Dr Kiflu has been held incommunicado ever since his arrest. His wife and four children have not been able to visit him. It is believed that Dr Kiflu was held in prison with other leading Christian pastors, who were arrested around the same time.
Their arrests followed the increased repression of Christians in Eritrea. In May 2002, the government banned all religious groups except the Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches and Sunni Islam. Christians from banned churches began to be arrested and incarcerated in appalling conditions in shipping containers, open-air facilities in military camps, pits in the ground and police stations – all without charge or trial. The ban was part of a crackdown on anyone seen as posing a threat to the government. The suppression followed a Pentecostal revival, particularly among young Eritreans in military service.
Family
Dr Kiflu is married to Elsa and they have four adult children – son Yosias, twins Hermala (daughter) and Daniel and youngest son Senai.
Dr Kiflu’s church continues to be banned in Eritrea and has been forced underground. Christians constantly run the risk of arrest whenever they try to meet together, and when arrested may be initially taken to a detention centre before being transported to one of Eritrea’s many prisons. Currently, there are an estimated 1,500 Christians imprisoned in Eritrea.
Latest News
News from inside Eritrea’s prison network is extremely difficult to obtain. However, Release partners in the country and in the UK have said that Dr Kiflu is alive and appeared to be in reasonable health when last seen.
Take Action
You can write a letter of encouragement to Dr Kiflu at his prison address below. When writing do not mention Release International and please ensure that you follow our letter writing guidance detailed in Reach Out.
Dr Kiflu Gebremeskel
Karchele Prison,
2nd Police Station,
Zone 7 Northern East,
Zoba Maakel,
Asmara,
Eritrea
Answered Prayers.
Sun 19 Apr at 09:37
Wire Story
UK Breaks Ground on Massive Monument to Answered Prayers
|
Yonat Shimron in Coleshill, England – Religion News Service
After years of planning and fundraising, the roadside landmark shaped like a Möbius loop will represent a million Christian petitions, brick by brick.
CofE - Is The End In Sight?
The Anglican Communion Is Coming Apart.
Conservative Gafcon leaders break from Canterbury and claim the future of global Anglicanism.
Canterbury Cathedral
Not even two weeks after the Church of England unveiled Sarah Mullally as the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, a network of conservative Anglicans has exploded what fragile harmony or consensus existed.
A statement released last week from Archbishop of Rwanda Laurent Mbanda, chair of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Gafcon), announced his group plans to take control of global Anglicanism and refound it on scriptural orthodoxy.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has for centuries served as the “first among equals” spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, a family of 42 churches worldwide that derive from the Church of England. But years of strife over same-sex relationships have culminated in last week’s statement, raising the possibility that the fraying communion may be disintegrating for good.
In the statement, Mbanda declared that “the future has arrived” and that Gafcon was making good on its promise from almost 20 years ago to save Anglicanism from theological liberalism.
The movement began in 2008 when scores of conservative churches, mostly from Africa and Asia, boycotted the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops called by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Instead, they held their own gathering in Jerusalem, which evolved into the Gafcon network.
At the time, the dispute focused on moves by liberal Anglican churches in the United States and Canada to consecrate gay men and women as bishops and to create liturgies to bless same-sex couples. Then, in 2023, the mother church for the whole communion agreed to bless gay relationships. This prompted Gafcon to publicly reject the then–Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s traditional authority as head of the communion.
The latest statement appears to go further. Mbanda wrote that Gafcon would “reorder” the communion so its sole source of unity was the Bible. The traditional institutions that bind the autonomous Anglican provinces together—including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference of bishops—had failed to uphold traditional teaching and are rejected, the statement added.
“We cannot continue to have communion with those who advocate the revisionist agenda, which has abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority,” Mbanda wrote.
Gafcon statements expressed similar sentiments before, but now leaders are asking member churches to pick a side. While some Gafcon churches have for years cut all ties with the communion and even rewritten their constitutions to strip out mention of the Church of England or the Archbishop of Canterbury, others have continued in both camps: going to Gafcon events and taking part in the traditional institutions of the Anglican Communion.
This has to end, Mbanda’s statement said, and churches that belong to what Gafcon now calls the Global Anglican Communion cannot go to meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor give or receive money from the official Anglican Communion. And for the first time, the Gafcon archbishops will elect one of their own to act as “first among equals,” a direct rival to the authority of Canterbury.
Nobody expected Gafcon to approve of the choice of Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury. The former senior nurse turned bishop previously led the project to introduce gay blessings and also represents the first woman to ascend to the throne of Saint Augustine in Canterbury Cathedral, an issue for certain Gafcon provinces that do not ordain women as priests or bishops.
But few predicted such a bold move and so soon. Some have interpreted the statement as a schism, with Gafcon establishing a rival Global Anglican Communion set against the official Anglican Communion.
The Church of Ireland, Anglican Church of Canada, and Episcopal Church reaffirmed their loyalty to the Canterbury-aligned communion.
“We grieve that some GAFCON primates have chosen to remove themselves from the Anglican Communion,” said Sean Rowe, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. “We pray for their participation in God’s mission in their contexts.”
But Mbanda and other Gafcon figures insist they are not leaving but instead wresting back control of the communion from its traditional sources of authority, what they see as liberal and discredited.
In a podcast interview after the statement, Mbanda said the Global Anglican Communion was closer to a rebrand than a new organization and that it was the revisionist Anglicans in the UK and North America who were the true schismatics.
“Why would they accuse me of being schismatic when they are the ones who departed?” he said. “We have always been there. We stay there. We continue there.”
The announcement changes little for churches such as his in Rwanda, let alone breakaway Anglican movements such as the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which are sponsored by Gafcon and have never been in communion with Canterbury.
These conservative churches do not take part in communion affairs or institutions and have already jettisoned their links with the church in England. The statement will pose greater challenges for more moderate Gafcon members, such as Anglican churches in Kenya, Uganda, or Chile. Felix Orji, a Nigerian bishop who leads an ACNA diocese in Texas, said some provinces which have had a foot in both camps will have “an intense battle over this issue.”
“There’s going to be some conflict in the internal running of certain Gafcon provinces, and this may push some of them to decide, ‘You know what? We’re going to stay with [the] mother church. We’re not going to go with Gafcon,’” he said. “So it’s a risky venture, but it was necessary.”
But do not expect the entire Anglican project worldwide to divide into two camps just yet. Susie Leafe, the director of the British pro-Gafcon group Anglican Futures, said nobody expected the conservative minorities languishing within liberal provinces to abandon their buildings and salaries to start afresh as breakaway churches.
“I don’t think they’re going to suddenly say that everybody in the Church of England or the Anglican Church of Australia—that’s very mixed—they’ve all got to leave for new church plants.” The messy reality of Anglicanism, with liberals and conservatives and everything in between bound up in loose affiliation, will continue for now.
Indeed, the official response from the communion’s secretary general, Anthony Poggo, has been a plea for provinces not to abandon an official, if plodding, process currently consulting on more tepid reforms to how Anglican churches with different beliefs can relate to each other.
“I share the hope of the commission that all Anglicans, and the whole Church of God, may still seek and find agreement in the Faith,” Poggo wrote. Theological uniformity cannot be demanded—it requires “patience and love” and the “hard work of discernment.”
Gafcon leaders have denied their move was solely prompted by Mullally’s accession, but Orji doubted the statement would have arrived if, by some miracle, a more conservative figure had emerged as the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
“We’ve been pleading for repentance, for rapprochement, and now you have a woman, and this woman is in favor of everything we’re against,” the ACNA bishop said. “And so there is no hope. If the Church of England had chosen a male who is evangelical, I don’t think that this decision would have been made.”
Lee McMunn, a former Church of England vicar now a bishop in the Gafcon-aligned Anglican Mission in England, said Mbanda’s surprise statement prompted both joy and encouragement for small breakaway movements like his own.
“So much of Anglicanism is often characterised by nuanced statements to prevent anybody from feeling they’re left out,” he said. “So to have a really bold declaration centred on God’s Word, that’s the key for me.”
Refusing communion funds would be costly but worth it for other provinces previously still linked to Canterbury, McMunn said. “If we’re going to stand together on the Word of God, there will be sacrifices to be made. But it is worth it because there is now a clarity in terms of our communion.”
Beneath the disagreement over Mullally’s gender and her LGBTQ-affirming theology is a deeper argument over the definition of Anglicanism. Is it a relational movement, united around historic colonial ties to England and sustained by friendship and shared liturgies? Or is Anglicanism, going all the way back to the first break with Rome led by Henry VIII in 16th-century England, about fidelity to the Bible over transnational institutions and relationships?
Orji said he retained a lot of fondness for England, dating back to the British schoolteachers who led him to Christ when Orji was a teenager in Nigeria. But he welcomed Gafcon’s apparent decision to abandon these ties.
“It is important that the primacy of England should not take precedence over the primacy of Scripture,” he said. “We cannot allow our affection for England to trump affection for Christ and his Word.”
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