Born in 1976 in the rocky highlands of Jos, Nigeria, Akanimoh Peter was the son of a soldier serving in the Nigerian Army. His childhood was framed by the discipline of the barracks, but his true enlistment came in 1996. Like a modern-day Moses called back to Egypt, Akanimoh was summoned to return to Jos to begin a spiritual warfare against poverty and despair.

The Piggery Pulpit: “Training to Die”

Akanimoh’s journey into the heart of missions began at the Agape School of Discipleship & Missions in Gana Ropp. This was no ordinary seminary; it was a 12-month “Rugged Training” program colloquially known as “Training to Die,” named after the sobering book by Uncle Bayo.

The philosophy was absolute: to reach the lost, a missionary must first die to their own ego, comforts, and ambitions. To enforce this “death to self,” Akanimoh was assigned to the piggery.

• While cleaning pens and feeding livestock, his peers dubbed him the “Bishop of the Pigs”.
• This experience established a foundational truth: one cannot be too proud to serve when their first “pulpit” is a piggery.
• He learned the “Jesus Method”—to serve and not be served—honing a spirit that could not be shaken by the harshest environments.

The Breaking of a Heart: From Basakomo to the Montols

After his training, Akanimoh was sent to the Basakomo people in the interiors of the Gurara River. He was stunned to find a community living in extreme “backwardness” and total isolation, despite being less than a three-hour drive from the power and wealth of the Presidential Villa at Aso Rock.

It was here that the tension between “Proclamation” and “Demonstration” began to tear at his soul:

• The Limited Mandate: His original mandate was strictly church planting and discipleship. He successfully gathered converts under a tree in the village square.
• The Invisible Crisis: He quickly realized that while he had given the people a church, they lacked even the most basic human needs—wells for clean water and toilets for sanitation.
• The Faces of Despair: He met Mama Chongore, whose six-month-old baby was so severely dehydrated and malnourished she looked “tiny” and as if she were “born yesterday”.
• The Trek for Life: When another mother faced a child dying of diarrhea, he urged her to find a hospital. Her response—“Where is the hospital?”—revealed a world where the nearest help was a five-to-six-hour trek away.

From the Basakomo fields, he moved to the Kukopshuwe field among the Montols in Plateau State, encountering the same cycle of massive poverty and spiritual hunger.

The Theological Atomic Bomb: Integral Mission

Haunted by the “safest level of human needs” he could not address, Akanimoh returned to study at the UMCA Theological Seminary in Ilorin. There, he began mobilizing and sending student missionaries across the West African sub-region—to Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast.

His world shifted forever when he encountered David Bosch’s Transforming Mission. The book hit him like an “atomic bomb,” detonating the idea that the gospel could be separated from social justice. He became an Apostle of Integral Mission, a concept where the gospel is lived out through:

1. Proclamation: Sharing the saving grace of Christ.
2. Demonstration: Actively meeting human needs and fighting injustice.

A Global Leader with a Local Heart

Since 2004, Akanimoh has served as the Executive Director of Global Relief & Development Mission in Jos. His influence has expanded to the highest levels of global humanitarian work:

• Micah Nigeria: Serving as National Coordinator for this global network of churches and aid agencies.
• GNDR: Former Vice Chair and West African Representative for the Global Network of Civil Society Organizations for Disaster Reduction.
• UNHCR: Lending his expertise to the UN Refugee Agency and the Refugee Highway Partnership.

Despite these titles, Akanimoh remains a man of the field. His passion is described as “incurable”. While others sleep in 5-star hotels, he has been forced by gendarmeries to sleep “under all stars” at the Niger-Mali border. Beside him was his wife, Martha, and their shriveling two-year-old child, all of them shivering through the icy December Harmattan cold to ensure that medical relief and the Gospel reached the unreached.

Today, Akanimoh, Martha, and their three children—Edikan, Albarka, and Amy—reside in Jos, continuing to advocate for a gospel that overcomes poverty, facilitates community transformation, and refuses to look away from the world’s sunken eyes.