“As we approached the bridge that links Udei to Makurdi, we saw people running ahead of our car. They had a large herd of cattle going ahead of them,” Igba said in an Aug. 23 interview with ACI Africa.
“As we approached the men, we kept talking, hoping that the men weren’t Fulanis because we know what they are capable of,” he continued. “They kept running. I think they thought that we were soldiers. When they realized that we were not soldiers, they started shooting after our car.”
Igba said it was a miracle that he and the other two occupants of the car survived the ordeal. “I was very scared,” he said. “The killings here are too much. I have lost many relations to the Fulani herdsmen, but that was the closest I came so close to death at … their hands. I kept praying that God would protect us.”
The seminarian, a student at St. Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary in Makurdi, just completed his eight-month pastoral experience at the parish. He said he finds the inspiration to continue with his journey to the priesthood from his daily encounters with the people, whom he said have lost everything to the Islamist Fulanis.
“As much as the killings go on, I believe that God has his own way of saving his people and that Christianity will always rise beyond everything that threatens it,” he said. “I also believe that in God’s appointed time, all these killers will experience conversion and they will stop all this cruelty. This is what keeps me going.”
Igba recounted his constant message to the people of God he visited in the villages served by Sacred Heart Udei Parish: “My message, as I looked at them beaten and without hope, was simple. ‘Do not lose hope,’ I told them. Do not stop praying. I saw that all of them were tired of running.”