Matt Bush, FISM News
Fulani herdsmen killed more than 70 Christians over a two-day span, prompting state officials to say that citizens must defend themselves due to the lack of government protection.
“In just two days, over 70 Christians were killed by Fulani militiamen in Gbeji community in our local government area,” said Terumbur Kartyo, chairman of the Ukum Local Government Council in Benue, where the attack occurred.
State officials visited the site of the massacre. “Since the federal government is unable to stop the violence, it ought to provide high-powered arms to citizens’ defense groups,” one official told Persecution.org.
“We are standing on our request for the federal government to give us a license for our Volunteer Guards to bear AK-47s and other sophisticated weapons,” Secretary to the State Government Anthony Ijohor said. “The security agencies have been overstretched, and, that being the case, our people have to defend themselves.”
Police claim the attack was revenge for the alleged killing of five Fulani herdsmen. Even if that assumption is true, it does not justify the murder of 70 people by the Fulani herdsmen.
In addition, Kartyo stated that another local government saw Fulani herdsmen shoot and injure more than 100 Christians, displacing thousands from their homes and villages. One local resident told the Christian Post that at least 56 Christians were killed in the attack.
According to International Christian Concern (ICC), “Nigeria earned the distinction of being the country with the world’s worst persecution in ICC’s Persecutor of the Year Awards.
“Christian communities in the Middle Belt of Nigeria have effectively suffered a twenty-yearlong genocide,” said ICC President Jeff King. “Where is any action? The Nigerian government gives these attacks lip service without any meaningful response. Where is the outcry? Where is effective action? In Nigeria, the military, the police, and the intelligence agencies are all controlled by Muslims. This, coupled with a twenty-year lack of response by these agencies, should naturally lead to deeper questioning by the world community.”
The questions are fair. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with more than 200 million people living there, and yet the genocide and consistent killing of Nigerian Christians goes mostly unnoticed or ignored by the world.
The Christian Post reported: “Nigeria led the world in Christians killed for their faith last year (Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021) at 4,650, an increase from 3,530 murders the previous year, according to Open Doors’ 2022 World Watch List report. The number of kidnapped Christians was also highest in Nigeria, at more than 2,500, an increase from 990 kidnappings the previous year, according to the WWL report. Nigeria trailed only China in the number of churches attacked, with 470 cases, according to the report.”