‘My wife was hacked, my kids shot to death’: How pastor lost his entire family in Kaduna

The recent crisis in Kaduna which led to massive loss of life and property has thrown a cleric into unimaginable grief.
Likita Riku, an ECWA pastor in Masankwai village in the Kaura Local Government Area of the state, lost his wife and three children during the attack by unidentified assailants on Friday.
Pastor Riku had left his family at home while he went off to attend a men’s fellowship in another town.
He said:

“After the evening meal, I led the evening prayer and the kids all smiled and told me, ‘good night, may God see us through till morning’ and I left for the meeting. “While I was at the DCC Men’s Fellowship Conference, my wife and the kids went to sleep with

great expectations of uniting on Saturday with me after the conference, but the gunmen came into my home, killed my wife and our children.

“My wife was cut with machetes, and the kids were gunned down. Some other
neighbour’s kids fled to other neighbouring houses, but the attackers locked the doors and set the houses ablaze,” he narrated.
According to him, others that escaped the inferno were hunted down like game in hunting expedition.
“No infant was spared, no child or teenager was left alive. Adults were all eliminated. In death, man deserves the honour of a personal grave, but all these people were buried in a single grave – father and daughter, the mother and son,” he said in tears.

The attack on Sankwai, Tekum and Unguwarr Gata, all villages in Southern Kaduna, is believed to have left over a 100 people dead with many homes razed to the ground.