An endless massacre of Christians “killed for sport” is said to be taking place in Nigeria, but the world seems largely deaf to this issue.
While much of the world this week celebrates a beginning – Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ – in Nigeria, we mourn the end of life – the deaths of more than 100 Christians – while the world remains virtually silent.
According to Amnesty International, armed bandits have rampaged through around 20 communities in central Nigeria, killing more than 140 people. In a country where it is traditionally difficult to obtain precise statistics, some sources put the death toll at nearly 200.
Christians have been killed in a wide swath, across an invisible line that separates the country’s predominantly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south in Plateau State. According to several sources, Christians represent 46% of the Nigerian population.
“Yesterday there was another massacre of Christians at Christmas in Nigeria. The world is silent. Simply amazing,” tweeted leading evangelist Rev. Johnnie Moore on X, formerly Twitter.
More than 52,000 Christians “have been massacred or killed to death because they were Christians” since 2009 in Nigeria, according to Intersociety, a civil society group based in Onitsha.
“The U.S. Mission in Nigeria condemned the recent attacks in Plateau State and expressed its sincere condolences for the tragic loss of life,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital in response to a question. Calling for accountability, the spokesperson added: “We are deeply concerned about the violence and are monitoring the situation.”
“Not a day goes by without Christians being terrorized in West Africa in the most grotesque ways imaginable,” he continued. “Christians are being killed because of sports, especially Christian children. For every massacre you hear about, there are probably ten more happening in the shadows. The number of deaths is regularly counted in the hundreds.
“Entire villages are burned and pillaged. Thousands of churches were destroyed. Children and women are hunted. Countless Christians have been kidnapped. I met a pastor whose previous two churches had been burned down. Yet he remained in danger because he was determined to be a light in the darkness, even if it (cost him) his life, and it probably will.
“There is a new, deadlier threat that can threaten both Christians and Muslims: the threat of jihadists,” Walid Phares told Fox News Digital. Phares is a political analyst who has studied jihadists in Africa and the Middle East for several decades and has written several books on the subject, including “The Confrontation: Winning the War Against Future Jihad.”
“Indoctrinated by the Muslim Brotherhood and trained by Al-Qaeda Africa, Boko Haram members in northern Nigeria are gradually becoming the country’s IS,” Phares said. “They repress moderate Muslims and massacre Christians. Boko Haram attacks Christians in the central Plateau region (state) to expel them and seize their land.
“The worst place in the world to be a Christian is West Africa, especially parts of Nigeria,” Rev. Johnnie Moore told Fox News Digital. Moore is a former commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders and co-author of “The Next Jihad.”
“When ISIS was at its peak in Iraq and Syria in 2015, terrorists in a single state in Nigeria killed more Christians than all those killed by the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq combined,” Moore told Fox News Digital.
“There is an economic factor in the conflict, but economics is omnipresent in all similar conflicts, so it cannot explain the violence in the same way that jihadist ideology explains it. The goal of Nigerian jihadists is to expel Christians to the south, then eliminate them.”
Moore added: “There have been hot spots of jihadist activity in Africa for a generation, but what we’re seeing now is that these hot spots are converging into a fragmentary Islamic state, which has all the brutality that we have witnessed in Israel on October 7 and in 2017. Iraq and Syria 10 years ago.
Eyewitnesses said that when the Christmas attacks began, it took up to 12 hours for help to arrive. Former Nigerian Army Chief of Staff Ty Danjuma said this was because government troops were working alongside the attackers.
“The armed forces are not neutral, they are in collusion with the bandits who are killing Nigerians,” he told an applauding crowd this week. “They (the army) facilitate their movements, they cover them. If you rely on the armed forces to stop the massacres, you will die one by one.
The State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital: “No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks and we cannot confirm the motivations of the perpetrators. Religious freedom is a key U.S. foreign policy priority and plays a leading role in our ongoing engagement with the Nigerian government. We remain concerned about religious freedom in Nigeria and will continue to work with the Government of Nigeria to address religious freedom issues and ensure that all human rights are protected, including freedom of religion or belief.
Critics say the administration should do more. Earlier this month, 29 religious freedom activists urged members of Congress to demand that the Biden administration once again designate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” in the State Department’s international religious freedom report , which compiles a list of the world’s worst violators of religious freedom. The Trump administration included Nigeria on the list in 2020, but the Biden administration removed the country from the list despite protests from human rights groups.
The Nigerian Inter-Society Group recently said more than 34,000 moderate Muslims had also been killed in Nigeria since 2009. But Phares said there could be hope for peace, but action was needed now.
“There are many Muslim communities that reject jihadism and seek coexistence. After the ethnic cleansing of Christians, the jihadists (in Nigeria) will turn against moderate and reforming Muslims, as in Afghanistan or Iran. The United States, the European Union and the United Nations must create a platform for moderate Muslims and Christians in Nigeria and provide support to civil society. Nigeria could be fixed.
Moore called for immediate action to end the killings: “More can be done. More must be done now. The writing isn’t just on the wall, it’s everywhere.
