It is sadly becoming hard to keep up with the death toll of Christians in Nigeria. Last month 20 people, including a Pastor, were killed last month when Muslim Fulani herdsmen stormed a village and murdered the Christians they found there. This comes on top of claims made previously by Christian groups in Nigeria that the violence being brought to the country and in particular to its Christians by the Fulani Muslims is getting worse. There have also been other Muslim murders of Christians unconnected to the ongoing land use and religious conflict with the Fulani. These murders include the slaughter of a 15 people including two Roman Catholic Priests in the southern Nigerian state of Benue.
As time has gone on the Islamic murder of Christians has continued in Nigeria. According to an Australian Christian site called Sight Magazine, the Fulani thugs have continued on what Sight called a ‘killing spree’ targeting Christians. The Fulani are bringing death and destruction to Christians in Nigeria and although the Fulani are negotiating peace treaties with Christian villagers, the Fulani are apparently not sticking to peace agreements that they have made,
Sight Magazine said:
On 6th September, four men lost their lives, while two others sustained bullet wounds as Fulani militants attacked their village of Nding Susut, in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area.
Local resident James Pam, 34, told Watch Monitor that the killings came just two days after a peace meeting between members of the predominantly Christian farmers and the mainly Muslim Fulani herdsmen in Barkin Ladi.
“We thought everything was all right between us until this morning [6th September], around 6.30am, when we heard gunshot sounds,” he said. “We later found out that the Fulani militants killed some of our youths, who were on their way to farm.”
Pam said some members of his community lost their lives in previous attacks in April and that the peace meeting was organised by the army commander in Barkin Ladi, with the aim to forestall any further outbreaks of violence in the community.
“Unfortunately, the community was still attacked this morning,” he said.
Whilst there are as I understand, land use disagreements between the Christian farmers and the Fulani nomadic herdsmen, this conflict is, as we may expect when Islam becomes involved, taking on a heavily religious aspect. The Fulani and other Muslim groups in Nigeria are targeting Nigerian Christians not because of any political or economic reason, but purely because they are Christian. It appears to me that the situation in Nigeria has gone beyond the sort of conflict that could be fostered by the epic governmental mismanagement that Nigeria has been afflicted with and is now much more inter religious. The Muslims, whether from the Fulani group or other groups of Muslims in Nigeria have in some cases decided that rather than live in peace with their non Muslim neighbours, they will instead practise the Islamic theological commandment to ‘kill the infidel wherever you find them’.
The Sight article then went on to detail a number of other deaths that have occurred a the hands of Nigeria’s Muslims. So far this September, 22 people have been killed and Christian groups have claimed that a massacre in June claimed the lives of 230 people and displaced thousands more who fled in fear of their lives and the Muslim violence. Nigeria is truly becoming enveloped in a horrific religious conflict but this does not seem to be a religious conflict that has been caused by any religious hatred on the part of the Christians, all the violence seems to be being brought by the Muslims of various sorts.
I believe that the Nigerian Government needs to do much more to protect its Christian population. This population is now being very obviously targeted by violent Muslims and from reading the various accounts from Christians about what is going on in Nigeria, too many Christians have been left grossly undefended due to political and organisational failures by those who administer Nigeria.
Also to be added to the list of entities that ‘could do more’ to protect Nigeria’s Christians are the Western Churches. I’ve watched them over the last few years get more and more enthusiastic about promoting the unhistorical and naive idea that Islam and Christianity can get along fine. Now I’m not a Christian but it pays to pay attention to what Christian clerics say about various matters and what causes they involve themselves in. I have heard much from Western Christian clerics about how we should ‘welcome refugees’ and how Islam is a ‘religion of peace’ but very little honesty from them when it comes to the plight of Christians at the hands of Muslims in places like Nigeria. Whilst I appreciate that much Church diplomacy with regards to the securing of rights for Christians goes on behind closed doors for various reasons, it would be better, and would give the Western Churches more of an air of moral clarity, for them to speak out more loudly about the ongoing attacks on Christians by Muslims. They should speak clearly about this matter whether the problem be Christians being attacked in the lands that are dominated by Islam or where Islam is in the minority. There should be no more silence about the persecution of Christians.
I fear that unless the central and regional governments in Nigeria change radically for the better, then the current situation may continue as the low level conflict that it currently is, which is no help to anybody least of all Nigeria’s Christians. The nightmare scenario for Nigeria is that what is currently localised and small scale conflicts may break out into open and vicious jihad by Nigeria’s Muslims against the other faith groups in that country. If this sort of open jihad breaks out in Nigeria, then it will have profound implications for both the security of Africa and of the wider world and will end in maybe millions of deaths and displacements. The minor violent jihad that is bubbling away in Nigeria needs to be confronted and turned back. If this does not happen then the jihadis will become emboldened and will demand more and will kill more. All Nigerians need to be protected from the jihadist thugs but the Christians of Nigeria are that nation’s Canary in a Coalmine who are under especial threat from the followers of an ideology that has hate for others built into its theological DNA.
