Police in Kitgum District have launched investigations into the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of a prominent local cleric who allegedly died suicide following a prolonged history of domestic disputes, severe financial stress, and marital discord.
Pastor Fred Lukulala of Calvary Church-a Pentecostal ministry with congregations in both Gangdyang village in Kitgum Town and the Orom trading centre-was found dead over the weekend. His body was discovered hanging from a mango tree on his farm in Lobiri village, Katwotwo parish, located within the remote Orom East sub-county.
According to official police reports, the grim discovery was made on Sunday morning by David Lokwang, a laborer employed at the pastor’s agricultural estate. Lokwang had ventured into the fields to inspect a maize plantation when he stumbled upon the body.
Lokwang told homicide detectives that he had last seen Pastor Lukulala leaving his farmhouse heading toward the gardens on Saturday. It was only 24 hours later that the reality of the situation became clear.
Mr Joe Oloya, the Aswa East regional police spokesperson, confirmed that a specialized team of law enforcement officers, including scene-of-crime experts and homicide detectives, immediately deployed to the area upon receiving the alert.
“A team of police officers visited the scene as the investigation into the incident continues,” Mr. Oloya said in an official statement.
“The body of the man of God was retrieved in the presence of his relatives and transported to the Kitgum General Hospital morgue for a post-mortem examination to officially ascertain the exact cause of death.”
To understand the trajectory that led to this tragic outcome, local leaders point to a decade-long history of community service that was heavily impacted by economic hardship. Pastor Lukulala reportedly arrived in the Kitgum region approximately ten years ago. Initially, he served as the caretaker for an estate acquired by a group of American benefactors under the umbrella of the Calvary (Mission) Church.
On this land, the mission established the Destiny Nursery and Primary School in Latodore, a village neighboring Lobiri. However, the educational venture faced severe headwinds. By 2019, due to low community support and the inability of local parents to pay school fees to maintain teacher welfare, the institution collapsed.
Distressed by the failure but determined to keep the mission alive, Pastor Lukulala personally injected his own dwindling resources into relocating the school to the Orom Trading Centre, a more populous hub, while simultaneously opening a commercial farm on the church land to subsidize the school’s operational costs.
Mr. Johnson Acellam Toodera, the Orom sub-county chairperson, intimately knew the burden the pastor carried.
“Parents did not support the school in terms of payments, and it closed. That depressed him a lot,” Toodera revealed in an interview. “Sometimes he tipped me about his condition and how he always disagreed with his family over running a farm and a school deep in the village remotely.”
While financial anxieties weighed heavily on the cleric, security and local sources indicate that the primary catalyst for his ultimate despair was a deeply toxic, fractured marriage.
Mr. Gabriel Otukutipu, the security coordinator for Kitgum and Lamwo districts based in Orom sub-county, provided a detailed account to the Daily Monitor, revealing that Pastor Lukulala’s domestic miseries had escalated dramatically over the last two years. The disputes reportedly centered on the denial of conjugal rights and severe disagreements over the management of farm revenues.
According to Otukutipu, the pastor’s wife, a Kenyan national, had abandoned the matrimonial home at the Latodore farmhouse following a bitter dispute regarding the denial of sex. She relocated to the Orom Trading Centre, leaving Lukulala isolated in the village.
“She left him alone; however, she kept her eyes on the ground, not to see him near any woman,” Otukutipu explained. He added that despite refusing intimacy with her husband, she aggressively policed his personal life, allegedly assaulting a local woman just a fortnight ago whom she suspected was having an affair with the pastor.
The volatile situation reached a boiling point on Friday, when the wife arrived unexpectedly at the Lobiri farm to confront Lukulala over the alleged affair. The confrontation resulted in a bitter exchange of words that lasted late into the night before she departed the following morning.
Left alone and visibly shaken, Pastor Lukulala began setting affairs in order. On Saturday morning, he placed a phone call to his junior pastor, instructing him to lead the upcoming Sunday church service, claiming he was unwell.
In a poignant sequence of events detailed by security officials, Lukulala then walked through the village, mobilizing neighbors to assist him with weeding his bean plantation the following day. Upon returning to his house, he attempted to light a charcoal stove. In what is believed to have been his final act of communication, he picked up a piece of charcoal and inscribed a stark message on the wall: “It is time up.”
He then walked out to the plantation. “His two workers saw him climbing the mango tree and thought he was merely harvesting fruits to eat,” Otukutipu stated.
The true nature of his actions was only realized when community members turned up on Sunday to help with the promised farm work, only to find the religious leader deceased. Police investigations remain ongoing as the community processes the loss of a leader who cracked under the combined weight of financial ruin and marital collapse.