President of Nigeria Claims Holidays Could Have Been Worse for Christians

ICC Note:
After another bloody holiday season for Christians in Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan claimed that there were more attacks on Christians that were prevented on Christmas Day. Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group that targets Christians, have attacked Christians over the Christmas holiday for the past three years. This year up to 43 Christians were killed in separate on days before and after Christmas. Defending the administrations security performance over the holiday, the President said that the administration was able to foil many other attacks by Boko Haram. Will Nigeria ever be able to effectively confront the Islamic extremist group?      
1/8/2013 Nigeria (MorningStarNews) – Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan defended his administration’s efforts to protect churches as he visited a worship service in Abuja last Sunday (Dec. 30), amid disputed reports of massacred Christians in Borno state.
While the administration says it found press reports of a massacre of 15 Christians in Chibok, Borno state on Sunday (Dec. 30) to be false, a pastor who visited the site of a Dec. 21 slaughter of 15 Christians in Musari village confirmed the killings with survivors and other area residents.
The pastor, who serves a congregation in the state capital of Maiduguri and whose name is withheld for security reasons, told Morning Star News that he visited the site about three kilometers (almost two miles) from his church the day after the attack. The military had removed the bodies, evacuated the injured to a hospital and claimed only five people were killed by Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, but area survivors told the pastor the Islamic militants slit the throats of 15 Christians.
The Boko Haram militants took only Christians out of their homes at gunpoint and gathered them together, he said.
“The gunmen invaded the village at night and brought out the Christian members of the community, and then they tied their hands and slaughtered them,” he said.
Lamenting that so many Christians have felt compelled to flee Borno, the pastor said he was prepared to lay down his life for the sake of the gospel in spite of threats from Muslim extremists.
Military authorities in Maiduguri confirmed that militants from Boko Haram, which seeks to destabilize the government and impose strict sharia (Islamic law) on Nigeria, selectively killed Christians in an attack between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on Dec. 21.
At the same time, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) this week denied a news report of a massacre at a Church of the Brethren (Eklisiyar Yan Uwa, or EYN) congregation in Kyachi, a village in Borno state’s Chibok area. Mohammed Kanar, NEMA’s area coordinator, had been quoted in media reports as confirming the attack, but NEMA spokesman Yushau A. Shuaib roundly denied it.
“Though some of the reports claimed a source from NEMA provided the information, the agency not only contacted the same officer who denied it in its entirety, it also assigned a special team to investigate and verify the allegation, which was later found to be unsubstantiated and untrue,” Shuaib reportedly said.
President’s Defense
President Jonathan was visiting an EYN congregation in Abuja when he told the church that his administration had foiled several Christmas Day attacks.
“Boko Haram planned to carry out a lot of attacks on Christmas Day, but we suppressed their plans during the Christmas holiday, and most of their plans were not executed because of the strategies put in place by the security agencies, which aborted their efforts,” he said.
EYN leaders had informed Jonathan that 109 of its members have been killed by Islamic extremists and 50 congregations in the country’s northeast have been destroyed. The Rev. Daniel Mbaya said the Church of the Brethren is one of the most prevalent denominations in the northeast but has been severely damaged by Boko Haram.
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