Christian persecution in Nigeria: “The situation in Africa’s most populated country, with the continent’s largest economy, is getting out of control and it cannot be neglected any longer,” writes Johnnie Moore below, but it is being neglected. As we have noted here at ChristianPersecution.com many times, there has been no significant response from Nigerian authorities or the international human rights community to the ongoing persecution of Christians in Nigeria. It is by now abundantly clear that despite occasional promises to act, Nigerian authorities have little or no interest in securing law-abiding, defenseless Christians against these unrelenting massacres, ethnic cleansing, and hostage-cleansing, and just as clear that the UN and other organizations have little to no interest in the plight of Nigerian Christians.
The Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle, Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, nevertheless once again urgently implores the United Nations and the governments of all nations that are committed to human rights and religious freedom to make the plight of Nigeria’s Christians a top priority. Those Christians are walking the way of the Cross. May our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ also bless them with the joy of a resurrection and new flourishing of their communities.
For previous coverage of the persecution of Christians in Nigeria from ChristianPersecution.com, see here.
“Nigerian Christians fear a bloody holiday season at the hands of Muslim terrorists,” by the Rev. Johnnie Moore, New York Post, December 12, 2020:
Their names haunt me: Patience, Revelation and Rejoice.
Patience was 13. Revelation was 6. Rejoice was 4. They are the names of three of the youngest victims of a Christian massacre unfolding in Africa.
They weren’t the only young victims slain in the same attack in the Nigerian village of Gonan Rogo earlier this year.
The terrorists killed at least 20 that evening as they went from house to house yelling “Allahu Akbar” along the way. They also put a bullet in the head of a 3-month-old and hacked a 6-year-old to death. We don’t know their names. We do know the name of a 14-year-old girl who was murdered along with her grandparents.
Her name was Blessing.
This horror wasn’t even the work of the infamous Boko Haram insurgents who’ve long terrorized Nigeria’s northeast. These massacres came at the hands of a group of radicalized Fulani tribesmen who — profanely inspired by Boko Haram and ISIS — have been summarily executing Christians in the center of Nigeria, not far from the country’s capital, Abuja. In this democracy, almost no one is ever prosecuted for the crimes. According to Stephen Enada, executive president of the International Committee on Nigeria, there have been at least 63,000 victims.
Thousands of churches have been torched, scores of children slaughtered, countless women enslaved, pastors have been beheaded and Christian homes have been set ablaze by the tens of thousands. The victims are mainly Christian, with the terrorists determined to also kill or extort every single Muslim who attempts to stand in their way. Christmas is a particularly vulnerable time of the year for Africa’s beleaguered Christians.
Last year, the Islamic State in West Africa marked Christmas in Nigeria by beheading 11 Christians on video. Two weeks later they picked up another young Christian as he traveled back home from a Christmas holiday with his family. The 22-year-old was last seen on a video being executed at point-blank range by a child whose terrorist overlord was issuing a warning to “all Christians in Nigeria’s Plateau State.” Another young victim I met in Nigeria in February had only recently escaped her Christmas kidnappers. She had been picked up by Islamists 5 minutes after passing a government checkpoint. Before they carried her away to the bush they shot the Christian men she was traveling with.
The situation in Africa’s most populated country, with the continent’s largest economy, is getting out of control and it cannot be neglected any longer….
