Just barely two days after a slain pastor, Zakariya Joseph Kurah (ECWA,
Obi) was buried, a herder in another part of the state cut off part of
the hand of another pastor working on his farm.
Rev. Hamza Alkali,
66, had to have the rest of his hand and wrist amputated. He told
Morning Star News he managed to tackle the assailant and wrest the knife
away from him or he would have been killed in the attack in Sabon Gida
village, near Keffi, on July 7.
“If God was not with me, the Fulani
man could have succeeded in taking my life,” Pastor Alkali said. “God
was with me, because I told the Fulani man that God who created me in
His image will not give him power to kill me.”
Affiliated with the
Nigerian Baptist Convention, Pastor Alkali said when he first saw the
herdsman coming onto his farm he thought he was just passing through. He
continued working when the Fulani came up to him without greeting and
asked him to hand over his mobile phone.
“Shocked at the Fulani man’s
audacity, I wanted to know from him whether he was asking for my mobile
phone because he lost his somewhere, or he was ordering me to hand over
my mobile phone to him. The Fulani man insisted that I should give him
my mobile phone. I then responded by telling him that I left my mobile
phone at home.”
The herdsman then told the pastor he would search
him. “I was baffled and wanted to know why he would want to search me,”
Pastor Alkali said. “He bluntly told me that if I don’t hand over my
mobile phone to him he would kill me. Then I now told him, ‘You have no
right or power to kill me. The God that created me and sent me to this
place will not allow you to kill me.’ I repeated these words twice to
him.”
Pastor Alkali came to Nasarawa state from his native Kaduna
state more than 14 years ago. The herdsman’s intent was first to take
away his mobile phone to prevent him from getting help once he attacked
him, he said.
“Suddenly, the Fulani man pulled out his sword and
attacked me. When I saw the sword he was dangling coming towards my
face, I tried to protect my face raising my hands up, and within seconds
the sword cut off my left hand into two. I saw part of my cut-off hand
on the ground bouncing up and down. I then realized that if in the first
attempt to kill me the Fulani man cut off my hand, unless I do
something to protect myself, this Fulani man would no doubt in his
second attempt to kill me cut off my head.”
The pastor rushed at him,
wrestled with him and held him, in spite of his severed, bleeding hand.
While held on the ground the herdsman was still gripping the sword, and
the pastor managed to snatch it from him. The assailant ran away.
“I
was there and the blood from my cut-off hand was rushing out,” Pastor
Alkali said. “I started shouting and calling on some brethren working on
farms close to mine to help rescue me. They came and pursued the Fulani
man. But then they could not get him, and so they returned to find ways
of taking me to the hospital.”
They took him first to the police
station at Sabon Gida, where he pastors a congregation of 80 people, and
from there police took him to the Federal Medical Centre, Keffi.
Pastor
Alkali said he has never had any conflicts with the assailant, whom he
had never met before, or any other Fulani herdsman, so he was surprised
that he was attacked for no apparent reason except that he was a
Christian pastor.
Throughout years of doing ministry in Sabon Gida he
has enjoyed good rapport with both Christians and Muslims, he said.
Many Muslims visited him in the hospital, he said.
“Both the Muslim
leader in community and chief imam of the mosque in the village also
visited me here in this hospital,” he said. “And this is all because of
the way and manner I related well with them while working as a pastor
there.”
A father of four, Pastor Alkali had pastored Sabon Gida
Baptist Church between 1992 and 1996 and then retired, but in 2011
members of another congregation (undisclosed for security reasons) asked
him to pastor their church.
He said that since Jesus Christ was persecuted, Christians must endure hardship and face any persecution head-on.
“Every
Christian that is passing through persecution should stand firm, as God
will not abandon such a person,” he said. “Our persecutors should know
that one day they will stand before God to account for what they done
here on earth. So what they should do is to come closer to God. They
should repent and leave the evil ways they are following.”
“There are many out there who are victims of such attacks, and they are suffering,” he said.
“These
armed Fulani men are killing innocent people in Nigeria. The best thing
that needs to be done by the Federal Government of Nigeria is that it
must act to end these atrocities against Christians. These killers
should be stopped.”
© 2016 Morning Star News.