From the Bimah to the Football Pitch.
SHLOMO BEN YAAKOV is difficult to place in a single category. He is a cantor, a Jewish educator, a football manager, a father and husband, and a member of the Jewish community at Gihon Hebrew Synagogue. Born to the family of elder Maduako, Shlomo carries his Jewish identity into every part of his life—the synagogue, the classroom, and the football pitch.
On Sunday, 28th of June, that identity showed up on the scoreboard. As team manager of Xriso Sporting FC, Shlomo helped guide the club to victory in the fifth edition of the Gifted Reach Out Football Tournament in Abuja. The competition brought together over 30 teams, playing from the group stage through to the final. Xriso defeated Okura Ofante FC in the semifinal, then beat VIN Sports FC to lift the trophy. Chris Okpara, the club’s chairman and financial sponsor, made it possible for the team to register and feature in this tournament. Without that support, the journey would not have begun.
The win did not come from nowhere. Credit goes in large part to Xriso’s coach, Rose Nwachukwu, who has a decorated career in Nigerian women’s football and captained for three years in her first club in Plateau State. She won the FA Cup twice playing for Nasarawa Amazon FC, including playing under coaches Egan and Ekpe at Pelican Stars in Calabar, and went on to represent Nigeria on the national team, the Super Falcons, at the Olympic qualifiers. After an active playing career, including a stint in Rwanda, she retired to focus on her family. However, her passion for football eventually brought her back to the game, this time as a coach, where she continues to inspire the next generation of players. Xriso signed her last year. In her first tournament with the club, they finished third. This time, they finished first.
The players carried that work onto the pitch. The squad that lifted the trophy has been grinding through months of steady training, building the kind of chemistry that only comes from repetition and shared match experience. They topped their group during the group stage without losing a single match, dropping points only in one draw and winning every other game on their way to the final. Many of the players have featured together across several tournaments, learning each other’s movement and timing along the way, and that familiarity showed in how the team played as a unit through the group stage, the semi-final against Okura Ofante FC, and the final against VIN Sports FC. It is the kind of growth that does not happen overnight—it is built one training session and one match at a time.
Shlomo summed up the win simply: “This would not have been possible without teamwork, discipline, and resilience.”
“With every pass and every tackle, we carry the dream of excellence, discipline, and unity. The pitch and the synagogue are connected.”
For him, football is more than a hobby. He is currently enrolled in a three-month coaching course organised by the AMAC Association, where he is working to deepen his knowledge of the game. He also serves as head coach of Maccabi FC Nigeria, which has an active training partnership with Xriso Sporting FC.
Shlomo is equally present inside Gihon Hebrew Synagogue. He leads Torah reading with a soft, mellow voice that draws the congregation into prayer. As cantor and youth leader, he is central to Shabbat worship and the celebration of festivals.
But the work that may have the deepest long-term impact is what happens at Gihon every week. Shlomo founded and runs Gihon Eden Academy, a Torah academy that grew out of a Hebrew class for children and new members of the synagogue and has since become one of the most important Jewish educational foundations and learning centers in the country. The class once met on Sunday mornings after Shacharit, but due to rising transportation expenses, it now meets on Shabbat at the synagogue’s social hall instead. Since writing is not permitted on Shabbat, the teachers prepare the lessons in advance—writing them out on a whiteboard donated by the Avraham Ben Avraham Foundation every Friday or before then so that students can study directly from the board during their Shabbat class.
Beyond the weekly Shabbat classes, students continue their Jewish studies through Zoom sessions and WhatsApp voice calls during the week, while examinations are still conducted in person at the synagogue. Today, 60 students are enrolled, out of which 40 are attending physical classes and 20 are in the online program, making the academy accessible to students across Abuja and beyond who cannot be easily present. Six sets of students have graduated since the academy began, and most of them celebrated their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs as students.
The academy’s curriculum goes well beyond Hebrew basics. Students study the Torah, Talmud, Jewish holidays, prayer, halakha, life cycle events, and the history of the Jewish people including the Holocaust. The goal is to build a strong and lasting foundation. The kind that has long been missing in Nigerian Jewry, where the absence of indigenous rabbis and structured Torah schools has left many communities without proper grounding. Shlomo knows this gap firsthand. He was born into Judaism but struggled to access Jewish education as a child in a country where Judaism is not officially recognised. The turning point came in 2015, when he had the opportunity to study under Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, the Chief Rabbi of the Abayudaya community in Uganda—the first time he had ever learned directly under a rabbi. That experience changed the direction of his life and led directly to the founding of the academy.
The results speak for themselves. Gihon Eden Academy students have consistently performed well in national Jewish educational competitions. They were once again at the centre stage of quiz competitions at the 2025 Camp Sarah, Abuja, leveraging on the strong foundation that the academy builds into each and every student.
The academy operates entirely on donations and the dedication of volunteer tutors, including co-tutors Immanuel Ben Immanuel and Fidelia Agoha. The Avraham Ben Avraham Foundation (ABAF) has supported the academy with internet connectivity equipment, data bundles for Zoom learning, and a new whiteboard to replace one that had been in use for over a decade. The academy is expected to become a fully accredited primary and secondary school in 2035.
Shlomo also serves as a resource person at Camp Sarah programmes, supporting Jewish youth education across the community. Those close to him say his long-term goal is to attend a Yeshiva. The academy itself points in that direction: a man who built a Torah school from nothing, who has taught hundreds of students, and who has filled the role of a local rabbi in a country that has none, is precisely the kind of person a Yeshiva should be training. He believes Nigeria needs its first set of indigenous rabbis. By everything he has done so far, he is already preparing the ground for one.
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