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Slaughter of Christians in Nigeria continues unchecked

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – According to the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG), Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari “has done virtually nothing to address” the killings and kidnappings of Christians in Nigeria by Muslim Fulani herdsmen. Therefore, the murderous persecution of Christians in Nigeria continues unchecked. In one attack this month, a pastor and two church members were killed and two were kidnapped. Then, days later, a church elder was shot in the stomach while his teenage twin daughters were kidnapped, Morning Star News (MSN) reports.

Fulani herdsmen are believed to be responsible for the slaughter of an Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) pastor and three other Christians in Kaduna state on September 6. Other Christians were kidnapped alive in the attacks, MSN reports. The victims were Rev. Alubara Audu, a 45-year-old father of five, Adamu Tata, 40, a father of four. and Ishaku Peter, a 37-year-old father of five. Sani Peter, 25, and his wife Esther Sani Peter, 20, were kidnapped. On September 18, twin sisters Hassana and Hussaina Garba were kidnapped from their home near their Evangelical Church Winning All church building in Kwakware village, Kankara County in northwest Nigeria’s Katsina state, sources told MSN. The attacker shot their father, ECWA elder Ibrahim Garba, in the stomach, requiring him to be hospitalized.

In a recent report, APPG noted that many clans of Muslim Fulani in Nigeria are not dangerous extremists. However, those that are “adopt a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP [Islamic State West Africa Province] and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity.”

Writing for Nigerian outlet This Day’s, Akin Osuntokun said on August 14:

“Today, a new breed of herdsman has emerged: an aggressive and murderous terrorist bearing sophisticated firearms such as AK-47s and even rocket launchers. And they become the mobile avant-garde army of political Islam in Nigeria. Given the country’s porous borders, many of them are recent immigrants from neighboring countries. Herdsmen from Niger, Chad and Mali can walk across the border and immediately lay claim to all the sacrosanct rights appertaining to bona fide Nigerian nationals.”

Christian Solidarity International issued a genocide warning for Nigeria on January 30, calling on the United Nations Security Council to take action against “a rising tide of violence directed against Nigerian Christians and others classified as ‘infidels’ by Islamist militants in the country’s north and middle belt regions.”