“I was lucky to witness his consecration – He was almost the greatest warmest preacher I ever saw for many years with a passion for the gospel,” Alice D Nakibuule, a former student at Uganda Christian University has said.
Uganda Christian University (UCU) Alumni Association on Friday issued a statement following the sadden death of the institution’s first Chancellor, Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo, who was also a retired Church of Uganda Archbishop.
They said, through the Secretariat, it was out of Archbishop Nkoyoyo’s hard work that a “great centre of excellence in the heart of Africa,” UCU was started and that Nkoyoyo Hall, a general centre for university meetings, was labeled after him.
“Let’s keep his family in prayers but also celebrate the life of the legend and anointed man of God,” the statement read in part.
The announcement received emotional reactions, as many former and current students applauded the Archbishop, saying he fought a good fight. Many Alumni asserted to the fact that there is no denying the impact—most of it positive— the late Nkoyoyo had on Christianity in Uganda.
Joy Mutungi Gunura said, “Yes, he was an effective evangelist. He fought the good fight.”
“Uganda Christian University stands tall because of him,” Winnie Tarinyeba said.
Nkoyoyo, at 82, succumbed to pneumonia. He was admitted at Kampala hospital on Monday January 1, 2018 and died Friday morning, ending a battle against cancer that lasted more than a year, his family told press.
In his 2016 interview with the New Vision, Nkoyoyo said his life took a U-turn in 1959 when he left a mechanic job of repairing rally cars to realign people’s hearts with God.
“I was doing my routine work, repairing and aligning cars, then from nowhere, I heard a voice asking me to give up whatever I was doing and start repairing people’s hearts back to God. That same year, I got saved during a youth camp in Ndoddo Church of Uganda in Gomba,” he said.
The told the newspaper it was not an easy choice to make as it meant changing his life goals.
Thanking God for Bishop Livingstone Nkoyoyo, James Abola, a People’s Warden at All Saints Cathedral Kampala says Nkoyoyo was a most effective evangelist he ever knew.
“My first encounter with Bishop Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo was on a crusade ground in Mokono town where he was the Diocesan Bishop. I was then the bass guitarist in a church youth band,”
“Later, when he was elevated to Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, he automatically became the Bishop of the Diocese of Kampala with his seat at All Saints Cathedral Kampala. The people in the congregation loved him. Evangelism really thrived under his leadership. And another quality shone, he was a man of action,” he says.
