‘Murdered Like Animals’: The Genocide of Christians in Nigeria Reaches New Heights

by Raymond Ibrahim, GATESTONE  •  May 19, 2023

• [S]ince the Islamic uprising began in 2009, 52,250 Christians “have been butchered or hacked to death” in Nigeria. – Report, intersociety-ng.org, April 10, 2023
• In just the first 100 days of this year [Jan.1-April 10], “no fewer than 1,041 defenseless Christians were hacked to death by Nigeria’s Jihadists …” — Report, intersociety-ng.org, April 10, 2023
• [R]oughly 15-20% of the slaughters were attributed to “Nigerian security forces, particularly the Nigerian Army.”
• By far, however, the worst killers are the “Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen who specifically target and massacre Christians and wantonly destroy or burn down their sacred places of worship and learning; homes and farmlands.” — Report, intersociety-ng.org, April 10, 2023
• The Intersociety report makes clear that the jihadists are fervently trying to cleanse Nigeria of any Christian presence….
• “This Jihad is based on the Doctrine of Hate taught in Mosques and Islamic Madrasas in northern Nigeria as well as the supremacist ideology of the Fulani. Using both conventional (violent) Jihad, and stealth (civilization) Jihad, the Islamists of northern Nigeria seem determined to turn Nigeria into an Islamic Sultanate and replace Liberal Democracy with Sharia as the National Ideology. … We want a Nigeria, where citizens are treated equally before the law at all levels….” – Christian Association of Nigeria, canng.org, May 4, 2018
• Turkey…, once a bastion of ancient Christianity with churches everywhere, has, after the Turkish conquest, become so thoroughly Islamized, that its ancient basilicas, such as Hagia Sophia, now serve as mosques.
• Although the report appeared on April 10, the massacres and atrocities have continued relentlessly since.
• Sunday, Apr. 16….One 5-year-old boy was beheaded.
• [N]ews outlets—including the Catholic News Agency—fail to identify the religions of either the murdered or their murderers. This video, which otherwise captures the tragic aftermath, refers to the Muslim terrorists as “bandits” and their Christian victims as “villagers.”
• Esther Duniya, a 14-year-old Christian girl, was abducted from school and forcibly converted to Islam. Instead of helping her father and aunt recover her, police handed the girl “to Daawa, the Islamic group in charge – of converting and indoctrinating Muslims converts….” — The Guardian, May 10, 2023
• [T]he government of Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria, has only “protected” the “Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen” to “the extent that the Jihadists now invade any Christian Community of their target at will and slaughter its natives and takeover their lands and properties at will.” — Report, intersociety-ng.org, April 10, 2023
• According to several Christian leaders in Nigeria (see below), the reason formerly simple Fulani herdsmen have, since Buhari became president in 2015, managed to kill nearly twice as many Christians as the “professional” terrorists (Boko Haram, ISWA, etc.), is “because President Buhari is also of the Fulani ethnic group.” — Breitbart, June 27, 2018
• “Under President Buhari, the murderous Fulani herdsmen enjoyed unprecedented protection and favoritism… Rather than arrest and prosecute the Fulani herdsmen, security forces usually manned by Muslims from the North offer them protection as they unleash terror with impunity on the Nigerian people.” — Rev. Musa Asake, the General Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria, canng.org, January 16, 2018
• “What Obama, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton did to Nigeria by funding and supporting [current president Muhammadu] Buhari in the 2015 presidential election and helping Boko Haram in 2014/2015 was sheer wickedness and the blood of all those killed by the Buhari administration, his Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram over the last 5 years are on their hands.” — Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria’s former Minister of Culture and Tourism, churchmilitant.com, February 21, 2020
• Despite all this, the American “mainstream” remains committed to describing the jihad in Nigeria as a byproduct of “inequality” and “poverty,” to quote former US President Bill Clinton, who once explained what was “fueling all this stuff” (the “stuff” being a reference to the genocide of Christians in Nigeria).
• In their quest to blame anything and everything but Islamic, specifically jihadist, ideology, even climate change has been added to the mainstream arsenal of reasons fueling the genocide of Christians.
• Worst of all has been the Biden administration’s response. In 2020, Trump placed Nigeria on the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern—that is, nations which engage in, or tolerate violations of, religious freedom. Under Biden, however, the State Department removed Nigeria—this nation where one Christian is butchered every two hours—from the list.
• For mainstream media and politicians, black lives—52,250 now and counting—do not matter — at least not when those lives are Christians’ being slaughtered by Muslims.

The “pure genocide” of Christians in Nigeria, as it has been characterized by some international observers, has reached new levels, according to an April 10, 2023 report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, also known as “Intersociety,” a nonprofit human rights organization based in Nigeria.

According to the report, since the Islamic uprising began in 2009, 52,250 Christians “have been butchered or hacked to death” in Nigeria. With each passing year, the number of slain grows. In just the first 100 days of this year, “no fewer than 1,041 defenseless Christians were hacked to death by Nigeria’s Jihadists … [from] 1st Jan to 10th April 2023.”

As Open Doors observed a year ago, in Nigeria, “every two hours, a Christian is killed for their faith.”

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