by Zara Mustapha

Ikenna Nzeribe a former banker was the sole survivor after Boko Haram members stormed his church in Borno in 2012, murdering 13 members of the church.

The scars on his face, neck and arm is enough evidence for the incident to be etched in the memory of Nzeribe, three years later.

According to Nzeribe, the dreaded Islamic sect stormed the church fired shots in the air and  “Allah Hu Akbar,” meaning God is great.

He said he immediately hit the floor  together with 13 other christians after which the gunmen with their AK-47 shot the 13 worshippers in the head fatally.

According to his interview with CNN:

They were mourning how Boko Haram earlier had killed three fellow Christians, but now Boko Haram was coming for them.

Now it was Nzeribe’s turn.

“As soon as I saw the man, I knew it was over for me,” Nzeribe, 33, said about the gunman. “The only thing I could do was say a last prayer, which was ‘Blood of Jesus cover me.’

“And that was it for me,” he told CNN.

Nzeribe, a handsome banker, was shot in the face with an AK-47 assault rifle, blowing away his jaw, lips and part of his tongue.

He faked death — “until they finished,” he said.

He bled profusely.

“I would say I died in the process,” Nzeribe added. “But God brought me back to life.”

Rescuers took him to a local hospital in Mubi, a suburban area in northeastern Nigeria where he was part of a Christian minority and where the mass shooting in church occurred.

He was later flown to London, where surgeons reconstructed his face.

Nzeribe recalled looking in the mirror for the first time post-surgery.

What he saw was “a very different person,” Nzeribe said, shaking his head. He stopped the interview, wiping away the tears and finding composure after long breaths.

A zigzagging scar runs up Nzeribe’s chin to his upper lip. His mouth is even more disfigured, but at least he can talk, in soft tones. And he has a great laugh, though he can’t smile.

He’s had more than a dozen surgeries, with more pending. He’s now recovering in Houston, where he receives treatment and lives with his wife and their baby, joining a Nigerian immigrant community whose residents find the climate similar to their native country’s. His attorney, Frank C. Onyenezi, is working on Nzeribe’s immigration status.

“We’ve come a long way,” Nzeribe said of his surgeries and reconstructed face.

He’s flattered to hear how he appears younger.

“It gives me confidence,” he said of his surgically reconstructed face. “It gives me hope.”

A devout Christian whose tale has been publicized in the religious press, he said has forgiven the gunmen of Boko Haram, whose mass abduction of Nigerian schoolgirls has outraged the international community.

“The first thing I did was to forgive them,” Nzeribe said. “Had they known better, they couldn’t do that.”

But Nzeribe isn’t naïve: He is warning the world about how Boko Haram and its leader, Abubakar Shekau, commit atrocities with impunity.

“Everything he says he will do, he does them,” Nzeribe said. “It gives them a sense of fulfillment and makes them want to do more.

“Just like al Qaeda, they are very, very destructive,” he added.

He now prays for the kidnapped 276 girls, still missing in Nigeria.

Watch video below: