World Ignores Anti-Christian Jihad in Nigeria
Over the last two decades, Islamists in the African nation have waged a murderous campaign of terror against Christians while the West largely ignores the massacre.
“If 10 people are killed in Ukraine, it becomes a major headline across all the newspapers across the world. If 100 people are killed in Gaza, it becomes the major news item on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and co.,” observed Steven Kefas, a Nigerian journalist. Yet when more than 200 Christians are slaughtered in Nigeria, “You can’t find it on CNN. CNN will not make it a topic. Al Jazeera will not make it a topic where you have guests coming to analyze this situation.” Kefas concluded: “The international community has failed these people.”
Kefas is not wrong. Since 2009, more than 50,000 Christians in Nigeria have been brutally murdered by Islamists. Across that same time span, more than 18,000 churches have been destroyed, and five million Christians have been displaced, mainly from the northern region of Nigeria.
What the world press and Western governments have, for the most part, turned a blind eye to is an anti-Christian genocide that has been transpiring over the last two decades in sub-Saharan Africa, with the most populous nation on the continent, Nigeria, serving as the epicenter of an Islamic-rooted jihad campaign.
The primary culprit behind this militant anti-Christian campaign is the Islamist ethnic tribe known as the Fulani. These Fulani Muslims don’t just kill Christians; they literally butcher them as part of their terrorist campaign to rid the region of Christians.
A recent example of this genocidal terrorism happened on June 13, when jihadi terrorists engaged in a diversionary tactic that lured authorities out of the town of Yelwata in central Nigeria. After the authorities had left the town, a “killer squad” of Islamists descended on it and went on a murderous rampage with machetes, hacking to death over 500 Christians, mostly women and children, in the town’s Market Square. Many of the bodies were then doused with gasoline and lit on fire and burned beyond recognition.
Father Ukuma Jonathan, the local parish priest, noted that the attackers yelled “Allah Akbar” as they descended on the town. Kefas, who interviewed some 30 survivors, reported that they observed the jihadists were “cutting them like they were cutting a cow or an animal to be eaten.”
The massacre of Christians in Yelwata, which had previously been viewed as a relatively safe place for Christians, serves as a microcosm of the jihadist campaign against Christians in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, when the mainstream global press does report on the slaughter in Nigeria, they disingenuously frame it as ethnic violence over land disputes. For example, when the BBC covered the slaughter of Christians in Yelwata, it reported as follows: “The authorities have not blamed any group, but it is safe to assume that there are lots of victims on both sides, as any attack usually leads to revenge and then a cycle of violence.”
The trouble is, there are no roving gangs of Christians running around slaughtering Muslims en masse.
If there’s any “both sides” element about this horrific killing spree, it’s that even moderate Muslims are fair game for these jihadi Islamists, as over 34,000 of them have been murdered by Fulani since 2009.
What is happening in Nigeria is not simply ethnic or sectarian violence. In a nation of 238 million that is divided roughly 50/50 between Christians and Muslims, Islamists are waging a campaign of terror in their effort to rid the nation of Christians. As Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of Makurdi testified to Congress this past March, there is “a long-term Islamic agenda to homogenize the population … through a strategy to reduce and eventually eliminate the Christian identity of half of the population.”
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s governing authorities have downplayed Bishop Anagbe’s characterization of Islamist violence as “misleading and dangerous,” asserting that it is based upon “Islamophobic tropes.”
The Biden administration effectively ignored the problem, failing even to acknowledge the religious motivations behind the atrocities. Frankly, though, the Trump administration hasn’t done much better. While Donald Trump has designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern,” no further actions, such as economic sanctions, have taken place.
How many more Christians will be martyred before the West, and specifically the U.S., not only loudly condemns but also acts to address this Islamic crusade?
