A Visitor Returns Permanently

By COLlive reporter

Another country has joined the map. Chabad’s Shlichus map that is. Or as Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky announced at the Kinus Hashluchim banquet this past Sunday, “we opened another country.”

Rabbi Israel and Chaya Mushka Uzan are the new Shluchim to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa.

The Uzans will be living in the town of Victoria Island, the main business and financial center of the Lagos region, and will serve the Jewish businessmen and expats that are there temporarily and permanently.

They will be operating under the guidance of Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila, the Congo-based Director of Chabad of Central Africa.

For more than a decade, Nigeria has been visited by Lubavitch bochurim during Tishrei and Pesach as part of the Merkos Shlichus program, a roving rabbis program of Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch.

In fact, the French born Rabbi Uzan was one of the bochurim who were in the country to lead a Pesach seder for local Jews in 5769. Now he’s back with his wife, making a lifetime commitment to head Chabad Lubavitch of Lagos, Nigeria.