05/08/2021 Nigeria (International Christian Concern) – Christians leaders in Nigeria are demanding the end of the rising jihadist violence rampaging the country.
According to Leadership News, clerics of the Ecclesiastical Justice Forum have urged President Muhammadu Buhari to balance Nigeria’s security leadership, by hiring Christians to join the governments Muslim-majority.
Reverend Ayuba Kantiok, a speaker at the forum, cited incessant killings of Christians in Nigeria as well as the continued enslavement of Leah Sharibu to highlight Christian persecution in the region:
“We also remember with tears the inhuman attack and killing of our people at internally displaced persons IDPs camp in Benue. Most importantly our tears are flooding down our cheeks because the Christian Church in Nigeria is facing the most difficult era since the inception of Nigeria.
Today Leah Sharibu has been left in the hands of terrorists because she is a Christian. Today the government is saying nothing about her. Today christians are facing the worse model of injustice, one of the worst in the 21st Century.”
Separately, a recent report by Morning Star News has brough to light the murder of 12 Christians in just two of Nigeria’s middle-belt states in a matter of one week.
“In north-central Nigeria’s Nasarawa state, herdsmen killed 12 Christian farmers in Ajimaka, Doma County, in attacks there and in 13 other villages from April 24 until April 29, area leader Barnabas Zayol told Morning Star News. The attacks displaced tens of thousands of people, Christian leaders said.”
The attacks were suspected to be at the hands of Fulani Militants, a jihadist group which has surpassed Boko Haram as the greatest threat to Nigerian Christians. Christians are particularly targeted in the middle belt region of Nigeria where the Muslim majority north meets the mostly Christian south, creating an environment of ethnic tension which often results in severe Christian persecution. Christian communities are targeted, and thousands of believers have been kidnapped, tortured and killed with nowhere to turn for safety.
Please join us in praying for our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, for the Lord to strengthen the Nigerian church and heal His persecuted children of their trauma. Please also pray for the world to recognize the scale of the suffering that believers are having to endure in Nigeria, as well as for the souls of those who persecute the church, that all will repent and find salvation in Christ.
For interviews please contact Alison Garcia at press@persecution.org
