ICC Note:
According to estimates, Boko Haram, a radical Islamic insurgency bent on establishing a separate Islamic state to be ruled by Sharia law, has destroyed more than 1,000 churches across Nigeria since 2010. For years, Boko Haram has waged a campaign of terror against Christians living and working in Nigeria’s remote north. In 2014 alone, Boko Haram abducted hundreds of Christians, forcing them to convert to Islam and, in the case of more than 200 schoolgirls taken from Chibok last April, selling them into lifetimes of domestic and sexual servitude as child brides.
01/06/2014 Nigeria (Gatestone Institute) – In just two months, from August to October, nearly 200 Christian churches were destroyed in Nigeria by the Islamic organization Boko Haram and its Muslim allies, after their capture of towns and villages in the north-eastern states of Borno and Adamawa. In the words of Reverend Gideon Obasogie, the director of Catholic Social Communication of Maiduguri Diocese in Borno State: “The group’s seizure of territory in both states has seen 185 churches torched and over 190,000 people displaced by their insurgency.”
Obasogie added that Boko Haram’s “ransacking and torching” of churches was “sad, heart-aching and potentially dangerous to the territorial integrity and common good of Nigeria…. Our priests are displaced, while citizens… are counting their losses and regrets as they have been reduced to the status of Internally Displaced Persons [IDP]. Where is the freedom?… Life is really terribly difficult.”
In 2011, hundreds of Christians were killed and 430 churches destroyed or damaged in Nigeria by Boko Haram. In 2012, 900 Christians were slaughtered and an unknown number of churches destroyed. In 2013, 612 Christians were slaughtered and approximately 300 churches destroyed.
This suggests that in the last four years alone, approximately 1,000 Christian churches have been destroyed by Boko Haram and its Muslim sympathizers in a nation that is approximately half Christian half Muslim.
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