Which notable gospel preachers and pastors attended Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria?
Several of Nigeria’s most influential gospel ministers are proud alumni of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria including Apostle Joshua Selman (Chemical Engineering; founder of Koinonia/ENI), Pastor Chris Delvan Gwamna (History and Political Science; psalmist and pastor), Bishop Kola Onaolapo (Chemistry; founder of Abundant Life Gospel Church), Pastor Sarah Omakwu (Sociology), the late Pastor Ina Omakwu (Microbiology), Pastor Esther Ibanga (Business Administration), and Pastor Ayo Akinsanya (Biochemistry graduated best student in his department in 1979). Their diverse academic backgrounds and deeply personal ABU campus testimonies demonstrate that “Naturally Ahead” produced not only Nigeria’s intellectual and political giants, but some of its most powerful voices for the gospel.
Introduction: Faith Born at the Citadel of the North
Ahmadu Bello University, fondly called “ABU” or “The Citadel of the North,” holds a monumental place in the history of African education. Founded on October 4, 1962, as the University of Northern Nigeria and later named after the Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello, it is one of Nigeria’s largest and most prestigious federal universities. Renowned for its sprawling Samaru and Kongo campuses, its fierce academic standards, and its historic role in shaping the intellectual framework of post-independence Nigeria, ABU is traditionally seen as a training ground for leadership, national administration, and professional excellence.
Its motto - “Naturaliter Excellens” meaning “Naturally Ahead”, was not coined with gospel ministry in mind - but God does not need an invitation to work in a lecture hall. Beneath the rigorous academic environment and the weight of northern Nigeria’s cultural complexity, something else was quietly happening on that campus for decades. In the Samaru fellowship rooms, by the dam where a young chemical engineering student prayed alone at dusk, in the hostels where believers gathered in small clusters, and in the university’s classrooms where young minds were being formed, God was selecting, calling, breaking, and commissioning men and women for one of the most demanding mission fields in the world: a nation deeply divided by religion, tribe, and politics, desperately needing the transforming power of the gospel.
Here are ten gospel ministers whose paths to pulpits, congregations, and global ministry all passed through Zaria.
1. Apostle Dr. Joshua Selman Nimmak
Degree: Bachelor of Science, Chemical Engineering
Years at ABU: Early 2000s (founded ENI/Koinonia in 2011, after graduating)
Ministry: Founder and Senior Pastor, Eternity Network International (ENI) / Koinonia Global, Zaria
If you stand today at the edge of the Samaru dam site, a quiet body of water near the main campus of Ahmadu Bello University, you are standing on ground that means something in the story of one of Nigeria’s most influential young apostolic voices.
Growing up as a young man who loves God, Joshua Selman would always move to a solitary dam site and be studying the Word of God and praying in the spirit which helped in preparing and shaping him into becoming the supernatural preacher of the gospel that he is today. While his colleagues were in halls, in cafeterias, in social circles, the young chemical engineering student was alone at a dam with his Bible, asking God to make his life count.
One night, in a vision he was standing in front of a tower that looked like one of the university’s hostels, suddenly, he saw a pool of people without an end crying and sobbing saying, there is no food and water. He immediately felt immense compassion on them. In the vision, it was like he had the key to their solutions and they affirmed that he was the reason they were in that condition. When he came back from that encounter, he immediately knew that God had called him to be a preacher and a minister of the gospel.
He pursued higher education at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering. While at the university, he was actively involved in campus ministry and began mentoring students in spiritual growth and leadership.
The ministry he went on to build after graduating is headquartered in Zaria — the same city where his calling was birthed. Koinonia is the name of the ministry led by Apostle Joshua Selman and it is currently held in two states: Kaduna State (Zaria) and Abuja (FCT). Apostle Selman never left Zaria behind. He built his ministry there, anchoring it in the very city where God met him as a lonely engineering student at a dam.
On June 20, 2025, Selman was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Ministry (DMin) in Leadership and Divinity by Faith Leads University, in recognition of his contributions to Christian ministry and leadership development.
The chemical engineer became a global apostle. The dam is still there. So is the ministry.
ABU Connection: BSc Chemical Engineering, ABU Zaria. Ministry began on campus. Eternity Network International (ENI) / Koinonia Global is headquartered in Samaru, Zaria. You can read the full Biography of Apostle Joshua Selman here
2. Pastor Chris Delvan Gwamna — The Historian Who Became a Psalmist
Ministry: Presiding Pastor, The King of All Kings Church of the Capstone (formerly New Life Assembly / New Life Pastoral Care Centre), Kaduna
The story of how Pastor Chris Delvan Gwamna first encountered the gospel carries the specific fingerprints of a sovereign God who works through unlikely moments. After secondary school, Pastor Gwamna enrolled at the College of Arts, Science, and Technology in Zaria, where he first encountered the gospel message through interactions with a blind professor’s wife, marking an early intersection between his studies and emerging faith interests.
It was at that preliminary encounter - through the testimony and witness of a blind woman whose faith clearly exceeded her limitation - that something broke open in the young student from Kagoro. He proceeded to ABU proper for his degree in History and Political Science, carrying with him a spiritual hunger that the lecture halls could never fully satisfy.
Gwamna was born in Kagoro, Kaduna State, Nigeria on 12 December 1960. He graduated from Ahmadu Bello University in the 1980s with a bachelor’s degree (BSc) in history and political science. His formation in the study of history the narrative of peoples, cultures, power, and civilisations gave him a framework for understanding the sweep of God’s purposes across human time. It shows in every song he writes.
The discipline of historical analysis did not leave him when he stepped into ministry. It shows in the depth and cultural consciousness of his music, in his 2003 translation of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible into Hausa Language for the Bible League of the United States of America, and in the intentionality with which he has planted ministry within the northern Nigerian context he knows so intimately.
In 2018, he was listed by YNaija as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Christian Ministry in Nigeria.
The historian of nations became a keeper of God’s songs for the north. ABU gave him the intellectual tools. God gave him the melody. You can read the full biography of Pastor Chris Delvan Gwamna here.
3. Bishop Kola Onaolapo
Bishop Kola Onaolapo (of blessed memory) was the founder of Abundant Life Gospel Church worldwide with its international headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria. He was born on July 27, 1957, to Pa. and Mrs. Onaolapo, at Erin-Ile, in Kwara State, Nigeria.
In 1975, he gained admission into Ahmadu Bello University’s School of Basic Studies and was admitted into the University’s Faculty of Science where he studied Chemistry. He received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1976 as an undergraduate and began to preach the gospel while in the university. He was actively involved in evangelistic outreaches in Samaru, Zaria.
The campus testimony here is remarkable: He started preaching as a student in the university where he was involved with the Samaru Gospel Team, a campus crusade, using the Assemblies of God Church in Samaru. As a student pastor, he preached in many crusades in Zaria so much that many people were not sure if he was a student or a pastor because the intensity of his commitment to the gospel was such that his peers lost track of which category he occupied. He occupied both, simultaneously, with everything he had.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Science (BSc), Chemistry from Ahmadu Bello University in 1980, he was employed by the Plateau State Government to work as a teacher in Jos. It was while he was teaching he had an encounter with God a 3am visitation that commissioned him fully into ministry. He started Abundant Life Gospel Church in 1984 in Ilorin before relocating to Lagos, where the church became one of Nigeria’s vibrant Pentecostal congregations.
Having fought the good fight of faith, finishing strong, the Lord called him home on 14th October, 2012.
4. Pastor Sarah Omakwu: The Sociology Student Who Saw the Multitudes
ABU Degree: Bachelor of Science, Sociology
Graduated: 1984
Ministry: Senior Pastor, Family Worship Centre, Abuja; President, Family Ministries International
There is a vision that Sarah Omakwu (Nee Jagaba) had as a young teenager shortly after she gave her life to Christ that she has never forgotten and that has never stopped driving her. She saw herself preaching to multitudes. It was not a vague sense. It was a specific, opened-eyes encounter: she saw the crowds, she saw herself among them, and she knew it was not imagination.
That teenager enrolled at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, to study Sociology and graduated in 1984. It was on that campus that the teenager who had seen multitudes in a vision encountered another ABU student who was himself burning with a call to ministry.
Inalegwu Omakwu graduated from Ahmadu Bello University in 1980 with a B.Sc in Microbiology. “I remember that year, when Pastor Ina would go to preach and I would take handkerchiefs. In the middle, I would just slip a handkerchief to him and I would have perfumed it. One thing led to the other and he asked me to marry him.”
The ABU campus was not merely where Sarah Omakwu earned her degree. It was where she met the man with whom she would co-found one of Nigeria’s most beloved churches. The sociology lecture halls, the campus fellowship meetings, the everyday life of Samaru and Kongo these were the geography of a love story and a ministry partnership that would eventually touch hundreds of thousands.
Family Worship Centre, founded on April 11, 1993, grew from 47 members to a congregation of over 26,000 with 147 physical branches across Nigeria. When Pastor Ina Omakwu went to glory in February 2003, Pastor Sarah led the church through grief, scepticism, and pastoral transition emerging as one of Nigeria’s most formidable women in ministry
The girl who saw multitudes in a teenage vision stood before them. ABU was where the journey toward that fulfilment took a decisive turn. You can read the full Biography of Pastor Sarah Omakwu here.
5. Pastor Inalegwu (Ina) Omakwu: The Microbiologist Who Built a House of Love (ina-omakwu)
ABU Degree: Bachelor of Science, Microbiology
Graduated:1980
Ministry: Co-founder, Family Worship Centre and Family Ministries International, Abuja (died February 25, 2003)
The story of the Omakwu couple is, in the fullest sense, a story that began at ABU and it cannot be told without honouring both of them as ABU alumni.
Pastor Ina, a native of Otukpo Local Government Area of Benue State, started off studying Microbiology at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. After a first degree in Microbiology from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, he knew he was called by God to full-time ministry. With meagre resources but huge faith in God he headed out in 1984 to Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma for a Master’s degree in Divinity.
The young man who studied the microworld organisms invisible to the naked eye, systems of life operating at scales below human perception was being prepared by God for a ministry built on the principle that the invisible things of God are more real than the visible ones.
It was on the ABU campus that Ina Omakwu first stepped into leadership of the Good News Evangelistic Association, a campus-connected movement that he later handed over before proceeding to the USA for his theology degree. Pastor Ina was the President before he handed over to Revd Kujiyat in 1983 in order to proceed for his Master’s degree in Theology at Oral Roberts University.
The church he and Sarah founded in 1993 became known above all for love practical, unembarrassed, extravagant love for the broken. He took under his care over 100 widows of pastors who had laboured in northern Nigeria. He sank boreholes in non-Christian communities. He supported missionaries in the difficult regions of the north. He built a church that looked, as much as any human institution can, like what Jesus described.
He went to glory at 44, still preaching through terminal brain cancer, saying: “Whatever pain I am going through is a walk through. It can’t stop me.”
Two ABU alumni. One marriage. One church. Tens of thousands of lives.
ABU Connection: BSc Microbiology, ABU Zaria, graduated 1980. Began campus ministry leadership at ABU through the Good News Evangelistic Association.
6. Pastor Esther Ibanga: The Business Graduate Who Became a Peacemaker
ABU Degree: Bachelor of Science, Business Administration
Years at ABU: 1979–1983
Ministry: Founder and Senior Pastor, Jos Christian Missions International; President, Women Without Walls Initiative (WOWWI)
Esther Abimiku Ibanga enrolled at Ahmadu Bello University’s School of Basic Studies in 1978, and was admitted into the Business Administration programme, graduating in 1983. Her passion for business led her to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Kaduna State from 1979 to 1983.
After graduating, she joined the Central Bank of Nigeria, rising to the level of manager over a distinguished career. In 1995, she made a decision that many of her CBN colleagues found difficult to comprehend: she resigned her position to become what was described as the first female church leader in the city of Jos.
The business training ABU gave her the strategic planning, the financial management, the systems thinking did not become irrelevant when she stepped into ministry. It became the infrastructure of an organisation that would one day command international attention.
Ibanga earned a degree in business administration in 1983 from Ahmadu Bello University, and after serving the mandatory year in the National Youth Service Corps, she went to work for the Central Bank of Nigeria, where she eventually gained a position as a manager. She left the bank to become the first female church leader in the city of Jos, Nigeria, in 1995.
In 2010, when ethno-religious violence tore through Plateau State with catastrophic human cost, Pastor Ibanga founded the Women Without Walls Initiative and led a march of over 100,000 women dressed in black to the Government House in Jos. Muslim women, led by Hajiya Khadijat Hawaja, joined the march. The two women one Christian pastor, one Muslim leader stood together at the Government House steps and demanded an end to the killing.
For that work and its sustained impact, Pastor Esther Ibanga won the Niwano Peace Prize one of the most prestigious international peace awards in the world.
The ABU Business Administration graduate built something no balance sheet can capture: a movement of women across religious lines who refused to let violence have the last word.
ABU Connection: BSc Business Administration, ABU Zaria, 1979–1983.
7. Pastor Ayo Akinsanya
ABU Degree: Bachelor of Science, Biochemistry (Best graduating student in his department)
Graduated: 1979
Ministry: Pastor, Deeper Life Bible Church, Merseyside and Wales Region, United Kingdom
The story of Pastor Ayo Akinsanya is one of the most quietly remarkable in this list because his conversion did not happen at ABU at all. What ABU did was form the mind. God claimed the man years later.
When Pastor Ayo Akinsanya graduated as the best Biochemistry student from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria in 1979, he was only a serious-minded, disciplined, and committed church-goer. In keeping with the tradition of the Biochemistry department, he was employed as Graduate Assistant in 1980, which marked the beginning of his career as an academician. He taught Biochemistry to students of Medicine, Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine while pursuing his Master’s degree.
He graduated best in his class. He became a lecturer. He pursued a PhD. The ABU formation was thorough, rigorous, and entirely secular in outcome at that point.
Given his keen interest in the medical and pharmacological aspects of Biochemistry, he obtained an Overseas Research Students (ORS) Award and was admitted into the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) for Leukaemia research in January 1988. It was while researching for his PhD degree that Pastor Ayo became born again. He then joined the Deeper Life Bible Study Group that was only just starting around that time in Manchester.
A PhD researcher studying Leukaemia in Manchester encountered Jesus Christ. The best Biochemistry graduate of ABU’s class of 1979, the man who taught medicine and pharmacy students, became a disciple of the Word. He joined the Deeper Life Bible Study Group in Manchester, and the rest of his life has been shaped by that encounter.
His story is a specific kind of encouragement for students who feel that academic excellence and spiritual depth are in competition. Ayo Akinsanya was the best in his class at ABU and is now decades into faithful pastoral ministry. The discipline, the precision, the structured thinking that ABU formed in the best biochemistry student in his year God put all of it to work.
ABU Connection: BSc Biochemistry (Best Graduating Student), ABU Zaria, 1979. Graduate Assistant and early academic career at ABU.
What ABU Produces: A Kingdom Reflection
Looking across the Preachers listed in this article, a pattern is unmistakable.
God called a chemical engineer, a historian, a chemistry student, a sociologist, a microbiologist, a business administrator, and a biochemist all from the same institution, but across different decades, and used the specific intellectual formation of each degree as preparation for a specific ministerial calling.
Joshua Selman’s engineering mind produces structured, systematic spiritual mapping that his millions of online listeners describe as unlike anything they have heard before. Chris Delvan Gwamna’s historical training gave him the cultural consciousness to translate the Bible into Hausa and plant ministry deeply within northern Nigeria’s complex identity. Bishop Onaolapo’s scientific training in the empirical world gave him the analytical authority to preach a faith that he treated as the most verifiable reality in existence.
Sarah and Ina Omakwu’s ABU years were not merely academic seasons, they were the geography of a love story and a ministry partnership. Esther Ibanga’s Business Administration degree gave her the strategic infrastructure to build a movement that made international headlines. And Ayo Akinsanya’s scientific precision, formed at ABU before he even knew Jesus, became the gift he eventually offered the Body of Christ in pastoral ministry.
ABU was never just producing professors, engineers, and administrators. God was, simultaneously, producing apostles, prophets, pastors, and peacemakers on the same campus under the same lecturer, in the same canteen, walking the same roads.
The Citadel of the North has always had a quiet revival running beneath its academic surface. It still does.
What is the spiritual history of Ahmadu Bello University?
ABU has hosted a vibrant Christian community since its founding in 1962. The Samaru Gospel Team, campus fellowships, and inter-denominational student ministries have operated continuously for decades, discipling students alongside their academic programmes. Several of Nigeria’s most prominent Christian leaders across preaching, worship, peacebuilding, and pastoral ministry trace significant moments of their spiritual formation to the ABU campus.
Conclusion: Naturally Ahead In the Kingdom too
Ahmadu Bello University was established with a vision to cultivate the brightest minds to develop a nation. Its motto Naturaliter Excellens, “Naturally Ahead” was an academic declaration. It has proven to be a prophetic one.
The chemical engineer at the dam became a global apostle. The historian from Kagoro became a psalmist who translated Scripture into Hausa and trained ministers across the earth. The chemistry student who preached so much his fellow students forgot he was enrolled became a bishop who built a church and went to glory still preaching. The sociology student from Kafanchan met a microbiology student from Otukpo in those campus halls, and together they built a church that defines love in practical, measurable, life-changing ways. The business graduate resigned a Central Bank career to lead 100,000 women in black through the streets of Jos, demanding peace across religious lines.
Know another gospel minister who attended Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria that we haven’t mentioned? Drop their name in the comments - we would love to feature them in an updated edition of this article
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