Jesus' response to Poverty in Luke: A Paradigm for Nigerian leadership

The human society is filled with ups and downs (Enegho 158), and part of the problems persistent in the ups and down is poverty. This paper explores Jesus¿ response to the poor and needy, being a suggestive example for the contemporary Nigerian Church and society. Despite Nigeriäs huge well of natural wealth, the country remains largely underdeveloped with majority of its citizen¿s poor and living in dehumanizing situation. The poverty condition is exacerbated by corrupt leaders who seem not to border about the growing rate of poverty amongst Nigerians. We live in an African nation like Nigeria where we have refineries without refining anything. We have poor young men and women in the creeks that hunger and starvation have pushed to locally refine crude. The problem lies in the fact that our leaders could not see the need to identify with these poor young men and women, bring them out and train them to mount our refineries. We rather have leaders seated in the office and think poverty will fly away. The research methodology is exegetical and descriptive phenomenology. It assesses the biblical text using its socio-historical background to compare to the Nigerian situation.