ICC Note: Another week and another set of appalling Fulani herder attacks in Nigeria. This reality has tragically become the new normal for Christian farming communities in central Nigeria. However, with at least 48 people murdered in Enugu State this past Monday, the brutality spreads south. The following report from Morning Star News runs down the news of the week’s killings as church leaders from Southeast Nigeria react to the emerging radical Islamist threat now threatening their region.
4/30/16 Enugu, Nigeria (Morning Star News) – Muslim Fulani attacks on Christians have advanced beyond Nigeria’s central zone into a southern state, with a church leader saying the aggression could cast Nigeria into civil war as a massacre this week took at least 27 lives.
Following the February massacre in Agatu, in the central-eastern state of Benue, and the attack on Monday (April 25) on three predominantly Christian villages in the south-eastern state of Enugu, church and rights figures began to describe Muslim Fulani aggression as posing a threat of civil war. Enugu shares a border with Benue. While a secessionist group called for Enugu natives to defend against further Fulani attacks, the archbishop of Enugu Ecclesiastical Province, Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, said Muslim Fulani killings, kidnappings, destruction of farmland and rape have become a regular occurrence in central and southern parts of Nigeria.
“What happened in Agatu is again being spread to other areas, and this is breeding serious civil war that is very much in breach of peace in this country,” the Rt. Rev. Dr. Emmanuel Olisa Chukwuma said in a press statement. “We don’t want war, but the way things are happening, if care is not taken, there is going to be another war which nobody can avert. It is either Nigeria must be one, or we disintegrate and go our ways.”
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