President Muhammadu Buhari
government has been indicted of persecution and killing of Christians in
Nigeria.
A report, authored by the Rt.
Rev. Philip Mounstephen Bishop of Truro in the United Kingdom, which was
recently concluded and submitted to the UK Parliament, studied seven countries
– Iraq, Indonesia, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Syria and Nigeria – as the world
capitals for the persecution of Christians.
The report focused on the killings
from Fulani herdsmen along the middle belt regions of the country.
It cited the unwarranted killings
of unarmed Christians by Fulani herdsmen who are often armed with sophisticated
weapons.
It observed that the security
structure in Nigeria appears reluctant to go after the attackers. The military
are more tuned to go after the victims – the report claims.
President Buhari has since reacted to the report.
Here is the full report:
The “intensification of conflict”
in Nigeria in recent years comes at a time when Christians in the country have
suffered some of the worst atrocities inflicted on Churchgoers anywhere in the
world. Since 2009, Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group in “allegiance” with
Daesh (ISIS) extremists in Iraq and Syria, has 424 “inflicted mass terror on
civilians, killing 20,000 Nigerians, kidnapping thousands and displacing nearly
two million”.425 The kidnapping of “mostly Christian girls”426 from a school in
Chibok north-east Nigeria in April 2014 and the forced “conversions” to Islam
of many of the students, demonstrated the anti-Christian 427 agenda of the
militants. Boko Haram’s continued detention of teenager Leah Sharibu ,
kidnapped in April 2018, showed that the militants were continuing to 428
target Christians. The Catholic Church in north-east Nigeria reported in spring
2017 that Boko Haram violence had resulted in damage to 200 churches and
chapels, 35 presbyteries (priests’ houses) and parish centres. At least 1.8
million people in north-east Nigeria’s Borno state had been displaced by March
2017, according to Church sources. To this extent, Boko Haram delivered on its
March 2012 promise of a “war” on Christians in Nigeria, in which a spokesman
for the militants reportedly declared: “We will create so much effort to end the
Christian presence in our push to have a proper Islamic state that the
Christians won’t be able to stay.”
Hence, by 2017 it was being
concluded that “Boko Haram has carried out a genocide against Christians in
northern Nigeria.” By that time, a new and growing threat to mainly Christian
farming communities had emerged from nomadic Fulani herdsmen. The Fulani
carried out attacks against Christian communities especially in Nigeria’s
‘Middle Belt’, the border territory between the Hausa-speaking Muslim areas in
northern Nigeria and land further south mainly populated by Christians. Reports
also showed mostly retaliatory attacks against Fulani by “predominantly”
Christian farmers, such as the November 2016 killing of about 50 mainly Fulani
pastoralists by ethnic Bachama local residents in Numan district, Adamawa
state. The causes of this inter-communal conflict are complex and “attributed
to many factors.”
That said whilst the conflict
cannot simply be seen in terms of religion, it is equally simplistic not to see
the religious dimension as a significantly exacerbating factor, and the Fulani
attacks have repeatedly demonstrated a clear intent to target Christians, and
potent symbols of Christian identity. This was evidenced, for example, by the
April 2018 murder of two priests and 17 faithful during early morning Mass at
St Ignatius Catholic Church, Mblaom, Benue State, in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.
The threat from Boko Haram and
militant Fulani Islamist herdsmen – with evidence of some counter-attacks from
Christians – suggests that the situation for Christians in parts of the country
has “deteriorated” , with Nigeria rising through the ranks of countries with
the worst record of persecution against Christians.
Faced with repeated accusations
of inaction and even “connivance” in relation to Fulani violence, it remains to
be seen if Muhammadu Buhari, re-elected in the February 2019 Presidential
elections , will make good his promise, stated in Easter 2019, to “do all it
takes to… confront these security challenges [and] not allow merchants of death
and evil to overwhelm the nation.”
Two priests, Father Joseph Gor
and Father Felix Tyolaha, and 17 others were killed on 24 April 2018 when
“suspected” Islamist militant Fulani herdsmen opened fire as a 5.30am Mass got
underway at St Ignatius’ Church, Mbalom in Nigeria’s ‘Middle Belt’. At least 50
homes and “farm”443 buildings in the village were “set on fire” before the
attackers fled
Case report in full At 5.30am on
Tuesday, 24 April 2018 “around 30 attackers” entered St Ignatius’ Catholic
Church in Ukpor-Mbalom, in Gwer East Local Government Area of Benue State, in
Nigeria’s Middle Belt. The attackers opened fire and 19 people were killed
including two priests, Father Joseph Gor and Father Felix Tyolaha.
The rest were “worshippers” ,
mostly “parishioners” . “Several others also sustained bullet wounds.”
The attack took place as early
morning Mass was getting underway, a service which was to conclude with “a
burial ceremony.” A local source told The Nigerian Vanguard newspaper: “The
service had barely started and worshippers were still coming for the Mass after
which a burial ceremony would take place, when sounds of rapid gunshots rent
the air.”
Oryiman Akule, aged nine, an
altar server at the service and witness to the atrocity, said: “As soon as the
priest started the Mass, he sighted some people with guns running towards the
church and alerted people but, almost at the same time,they began to shoot… We
ran and hid in one building.” Another survivor stated:
“People started scampering and
wailing” but they were defenceless as “the perpetrators started shooting
against the congregation.” Peter Lorver, whose stepmother was at the Mass and
who lost her life in the attack, said: “The herdsmen came and opened fire on
the church while morning Mass was going on.
After they attacked and killed
those in the church, they left and started shootingsporadically, killing
residents around the area.”
“After the attack on the church,
the herdsmen proceeded to shoot residents in thearea, and set fire to 50
homes.” Some reports give a higher figure of “60 houses”458 attacked and
“razed… in an attempt to sack the entire community…”
Also targeted were “farmland,
food barns” with the attackers “carting away whatthe people had in their
barns.” The attackers then “fled from the scene.” The identity of the attackers
was not clear. Nobody claimed responsibility for the atrocity although, from
the outset, police “suspected” militant Islamist Fulani nomadic herdsmen, a
view shared by state officials as well as Christian leaders.
People in the area had been
warning of the threat of attack by the Fulani for several weeks. On 3 January
2018 , more than three months before the attack Father Gor, the parish priest,
who would become a victim of the atrocity, “had put a message on Facebook
before the attack: ‘Living in fear. The Fulani herdsmen are still around us in
Mbalom. They refuse to go. They still go grazing around us.’”
Context of the attacks:
The attack at St Ignatius’
Church, Mbalom fitted a pattern of earlier attacks in the region, known to have
been carried out by Fulani. On 19 April 2018, less than a week before the
Mbalom attack, James Tsave, a resident in the area, reported that “Muslim
Fulani herdsmen in Benue State’s Anyiin village killed 25 Christians… The
assailants set fire to 30 houses, destroying them.” The media quoted Mr Tsave
saying: “Twenty-five Christians have been killed, and those of us who survived
have been forced to flee our village.” On 10 April 2018, two weeks before the
attack, in Gbeji village, in another part of Benue State, Fulani killed about
30 Christians. A resident stated that a Catholic church building was attacked
and afterwards houses were set on fire.
“Herdsmen attacks in the first
three weeks of April [2018] are believed to have caused the deaths of more than
250 Christians in Benue State, according to local media reports.” “Some 73
people were killed in central states – known as the ‘Middle Belt’– in the first
few days of 2018, prompting a high-profile mass burial in Benue State’s
capital, Makurdi.”
Fulani attacks have been
attributed to the desperate search for grazing pastures for their cattle at a
time of increasing “desertification” arising from climate change. Father
Patrick Alumuku, Director of Communications for the Archdiocese of Abuja, told
Vatican News: “‘Groups of nomadic shepherds are forced to move south because of
desertification, resulting in conflicts over lands and resources in this
fertile region.”‘
The superiority of the weapons
used by the Fulani has prompted commentators to suggest that the herdsmen are
funded and trained by others. Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe said the herdsmen
were “being armed with ‘sophisticated weapons… the Fulani tribesmen for the
most part live in the forest and cannot afford the luxury of such sophisticated
weapons – so who is funding them?”
Analysis specifically relating to
the attack at St Ignatius’ Church, Mbalom, pointed to an unambiguous religious
motivation. Samuel Ortom, Benue State governor, said: “The reverend fathers
[Joseph Gor and Felix Tyolaha] were not farmers. They were not in the farm. The
church where they were holding the Mass had no grass.
The armed herdsmen have moved the
narrative of the current crisis from search for grass to other obvious
motives.”
Aftermath of the attack:
In the weeks that followed,
attacks similar to that at St Ignatius’ Church, Mbalom, re-inforced the view of
Church leaders that religious hatred and territorial expansion were central
motives for the attacks. News reports highlighted that
“The attack took place near…
where the Muslim north [of Nigeria] meets the southern Christian area.”
Speaking on Wednesday, 30 May 2018, Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe of Makurdi
“pointed out that 11 parishes in his diocese had been attacked.”
Referring to the killings at St
Ignatius’ Church and elsewhere, Bishop Anagbe said: “Up to 100 Christians have
died this year in the hands of nomadic herdsmen… There is a clear agenda – a
plan – to Islamise all of the areas that are currently predominantly Christian
in the so-called Middle Belt of Nigeria.” He also said: “The Fulanis’ agenda
was the same as that of Boko Haram. Both groups are united in the same
intention to Islamise the entire region.”
In the UK, The Telegraph’s Africa
correspondent Adrian Blomfield stated: “The attack [on St Ignatius’ Church on
24 April 2018] has had a powerful effect on Nigeria’s Christians, persuading
many, justifiably or otherwise, that the Fulanis’ real intent is dispossession,
territorial acquisition and the expansion of Islam – all to be achieved by the ethnic
cleansing of Christians.”
Reports indicated that Christians
had carried out violence against the Fulani, while acknowledging that the
attacks by Fulani were far greater both in number and severity. “Herdsmen
involved in the communal violence are mainly Muslims from the Fulani ethnic
group, while members of the settled farming communities are mostly Christian.
Attacks have been carried out by both sides.”
Political reaction to the attack:
The Government of Nigeria
immediately responded to the attack by publicly acknowledging its significance.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, who was in the US in the days following
the attack, tweeted : “Violating a place of worship, killing priests and
worshippers, is not only vile, evil and satanic: it is clearly calculated to
stoke up religious conflict and plunge our communities into endless
bloodletting.”
Nonetheless church leaders
accused the government of inaction. “In the wake of the attack” at St Ignatius’
Church, Mbalom, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria issued a statement
“calling on President [Buhari] to ‘consider stepping aside’ and accusing the
government of security failures: ‘How can the federal government stand back
while its security agencies deliberately turn a blind eye to the cries and
wails of helpless and armless citizens who remain sitting ducks in their homes,
farms, highway and now, even in their sacred places of worship?’
Local leaders in Nigeria called
for police and other security forces to take action.
“Trever Akase, a spokesman for
the Benue governor, said: ‘The armed herdsmen also burnt numerous houses, shops
and other property in the area. This mindless attack was unprovoked, and we
urge security agencies to arrest the herdsmen behind the killings for
prosecution.’”
US politicians and government
called for the Government of Nigeria to act quickly to stem the crisis of
repeated Fulani attacks. US Congressman Chris Smith, chairman of the House
Subcommittee on Africa, said: “[The] killing of priests and parishioners… of St
Ignatius’ Catholic Church in the Makurdi Diocese signals that the religious
violence is escalating. It’s imperative that Nigerian authorities punish those
who are culpable, lest violence worsen…”
On 30 April 2018, US President
Donald Trump said in front of President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria at a press
conference outside the White House, Washington DC: “We are deeply concerned by
religious violence in Nigeria including the burning of churches and the killing
and persecution of Christians.”
64 Foreign Office Minister and
the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Lord
Ahmad, when answering a Parliamentary Question on this subject, has said: “We
condemn the recent attack in Mbalom, Benue State, which included an attack on a
church and up to fifty houses. Two priests were among at least 18 people
reportedly killed. We are appalled by the tragic loss of life” Case Review and
Analysis In spite of uncertainly over the identity of the attackers, the
evidence suggests a religious motive lay, at least in part, behind the 24 April
2018 killing of priests and worshippers attending an early morning church
service at St Ignatius’ Church,
Mbalom, in Nigeria’s ‘Middle
Belt’. Insofar as the massacre fitted with a general pattern of attacks by
militant Fulani nomadic herdsmen, the killings appeared to point out the error
of an analysis, which downplayed religious motives in exclusive favour of
issues including climate change, the search for cattle-grazing pastures and
other economic factors. In the US, response to the St Ignatius’ Church killings
from President Donald Trump and other political leaders both recognised the
religious dimension to the violence and renewed calls for the Nigerian
government to do more to bring the perpetrators to justice. A similar approach
is evident in the response made by the UK government.
Conclusions Nigeria is one of a
number of West African countries straddling the sub-Saharan transition zone
between majority-Muslim regions in the north and majorityChristian regions in
the south. Since independence there has been a conscious effort to ensure that
both communities are fairly represented at all levels in the structures of
power in civil and military life. But in more recent years this balance appears
to have been disturbed. In the northern and central regions of the country
attacks on and abductions of unarmed civilians by armed groups have become
increasingly frequent. The case study above gives full details of one such
attack in the so-called Middle Belt, and cross-references others that
demonstrate a consistent pattern.
Members of the Independent Review
Team visited Nigeria in March. They met with church leaders, representatives of
international civil society, FoRB NGO representatives, witnesses to persecution
and attacks in the northern and central regions and staff at the British High
Commission in Abuja. This included a roundtable discussion hosted by the
British High Commission specifically on the farmer/herder clashes in the Middle
Belt. There was a consensus in condemnation of the activities of Boko Haram and
associated groups in the northern regions as religiously motivated, the widely
publicised abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls being but one example of these
activities. But when it came to the numerous attacks by Fulani herdsmen on
farming communities in what is known as the Middle Belt, where Christian and
Muslim communities are intermixed, there was a divergence of view.
Representatives of some
international organisations and FCO staff maintained that these attacks were
primarily caused by factors such as a changing environment and the clash of
livelihoods This would reflect the position taken in an April 2019 FCO 65
research analysts’ paper cautioning against seeing the attacks as being sparked
by a Fulani Islamisation agenda (this was despite assurances from senior FCO
researchers in London that their own analysis, supplied to Post, always took
the religious dimension into account). However church leaders and witnesses
from the region maintained that the facts pointed to a further ethno-religious
dynamic as a significant exacerbating factor. It was pointed out that the
effects of climate change are more severe in neighbouring Niger to the north,
but farmer-herder disputes there do not lead to mass loss of life as Government
security forces are quick to diffuse tensions and initiate traditional
dispute-resolution procedures.
Additionally there are normally
only primitive weapons available to both sides. By contrast in Nigeria the
herdsmen side is often armed with sophisticated assault rifles, the Government
security forces seem to steer clear of getting involved; and traditional
dispute resolution procedures cannot operate when the situation has already
been significantly enflamed with one party to the dispute suffering
disproportionately. Add to this that Christian villages are predominantly
targeted and that attacks often start by attacking the priest and the church
and the religious dimension of the conflict becomes ever more evident.
Specialist witnesses interviewed in London also reported observing spikes in
geo-located jihadi social media traffic both before and after such raids.
Whatever the motivation behind
these attacks, however, it is striking that nobody is being brought to justice
for these crimes. Where there is such impunity the incentive is clearly given
for the attacks to continue and the affected communities are denied protection.
In just four months in early 2018 there were at least 106 of such attacks and
the resulting death toll was 1,061 Christian villagers killed, over the same
period there were seven attacks on Fulani herdsmen, two of them in the south of
the country . Since 2015 more deaths have resulted from these violent attacks
than those caused by Boko Haram further north. By June 2018 11,833 485
displaced persons from these raids were living in 17 camps and 54 communities
in
Plateau state alone had been
occupied and renamed by the raiders. On 3 July 2018 the Nigerian House of
Representatives declared the killings in Plateau State to be a genocide. Around
the same time British Government Ministers were insisting in parliament that
these killings had little to do with religious extremism.
Victim witnesses from Plateau
state reported that they received regular visits from staff at the US mission
in Abuja, but said that the British hardly ever visited (although a forthcoming
visit to Jos was promised at the roundtable meeting).
Post have since clarified that
they had visited Plateau a number of times duringthe past year to visit other
groups, but had not had the opportunity to meet affected communities.
Nonetheless Independent Review Team members were assured that contact is good
between the British High Commission and the Nigerian Federal Government at the
highest levels and that security and humanitarian assistance has been offered.
But until at least some of the perpetrators of violence in the Middle Belt are
brought to justice; the security forces intervene effectively on the side of
those being attacked; and solutions are formulated which take
theethno-religious dimension seriously, victims and survivors will remain
unconvinced that diplomatic efforts to date have been as effective as they
might otherwise have been.
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