Jihadists uproot 10m Nigerian Christians, kill 43,000 others in 12 years – Intersociety

By Richard Elesho in The News of Nigeria.

About 10 million Christians have been uprooted from their bases in Northern Nigeria in the last 12 years by Islamic Jihadists. Out of this figure, no fewer than a whopping 43,000 have been killed in at least 17,500 attacks on churches and other Christian worship programmes.

But the attacks are not restricted to only Christians. Some 29,000 moderate Muslims have also been killed by the rampaging Jihadists’ from July 2009 to July 2021.

These figures were given in a fresh report by International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law Intersociety, a respected human rights group in Nigeria.

The group released its latest report on Wednesday August 4, stressing that most of the Christian casualties were members of the Church of Brethren in Nigeria or EYN. 

Intersociety said the 43,000 Christian deaths occurred following systematic and coordinated attacks majorly targeted at Christians by radical Islamists or Islamic Jihadists and their collaborators (‘esprit de jihad’) in the Nigerian security forces.

“The Nigerian Jihadists also sparsely and collaterally target moderate Muslims as collateral mistakes or punishments of those collaborating with the ‘unbelievers’ or in revenge for state actor attacks against their targets, or  for purpose of enforcement of Islamic Sharia law or code.

The group observed that Islamic Jihadists and their ‘esprit de jihad’ in the Nigerian security forces have been responsible for at least 18,500 Christian deaths arising from enforced disappearances, or those abducted and most unlikely to return alive.

It noted that the 18,500 jihadist captivity slain Christians are out of estimated 26,000 of such deaths since 2009, put by a UN Agency in 2019 at “22,500”, adding that the total number of defenseless Nigerians abducted by the Jihadists since 2009 is put at 36,000, out of which 18,500 are Christians who are most unlikely to return alive while most of the Muslims abducted by Jihadists in Nigeria are later released unconditionally to their families, most of their Christian counterparts are killed in captivity or forcefully converted to Islam and marry thereafter.

Intersociety, further preaching religious freedom disclosed the following in its latest report: “The atrocities of the Jihadists majorly directed at Christians and their properties including homes, worship and learning centers; ancestral lands, farmlands, forests and bushes include: massacres, killings, mutilations, torture, maiming, abductions, hostage-taking, rape, girl-child defilement, forced marriages, disappearances, extortion, forceful conversions and destruction or burning of homes and sacred worship and learning centers as well as forceful occupation of farmlands, destruction and forceful harvesting of farm crops and other internationally prohibited acts.

In the same past twelve years, it was also independently found that no fewer than 30 million Christians especially in Northern Nigeria and their ethno-religion were threatened and ten million of them have been uprooted, six million forced to flee their homes or geopolitical locations to avoid being hacked to death and over four million displaced and became IDPs; and out of  the four million Christian IDPs, over one million are found in Benue State and 1.3m in the ‘BAY’ States of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, excluding Taraba. 

“Over 80% of fertile farmlands and cultivated farmlands ancestrally owned by indigenous Christians across the country have also been brutally threatened or attacked or occupied, leading to country-wide chronic food shortages and galloping increases in their prices. In the ancestral Igbo Lands of Benue, Kogi, Delta, Edo, Rivers, Anambra, Imo, Ebonyi, Enugu and Abia states, Intersociety’s recent research had found that no fewer than 700 forests, bushes and farmlands have been threatened, or attacked, or occupied by the Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen since 2016.

The News reports that there have been widespread coordinated attacks on Churches, Christians and Mosques across northern Nigeria since 2009. The attacks were launched mainly by Boko Haram insurgents, ISWAP and a sandwich of Jihadist groups operating across the country.

These are grim statistics. There are a huge number of Nigerians now living in the UK. I know that there is a large community in South Africa where they are now recent victims of the same violent outbreaks that have depopulated the white community.