300 Christians Killed in Nigerian Christmas Massacres

While we were sitting down to Christmas dinner with our loved ones, Islamist militants launched a wave of coordinated attacks against Christian villages in Plateau State in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region. Between the evening of December 23 and Christmas Day morning, the militants killed an estimated 295 Christians across 25 villages in Bokkos and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas, according to Britain-based international aid organization Barnabas Aid, which reported the following:

"The dead were mostly women and children including physically challenged people who were unable to run and were burnt alive.”

In total more than 1,500 homes were burnt, eight churches destroyed, many hundreds of people injured and 30,000 displaced. One of those killed was the Rev. Jonathan Daluk, a pastor from Tudun Mazat village who initially fled with his family but later realized his mother and brother were back at his house. When he returned to rescue them, all three were tragically murdered.

While we were sitting down to Christmas dinner with our loved ones, Islamist militants launched a wave of coordinated attacks against Christian villages in Plateau State in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region.
Between the evening of December 23 and Christmas Day morning, the militants killed an estimated 295 Christians across 25 villages in Bokkos and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas, according to Britain-based international aid organization Barnabas Aid, which reported the following:

"The dead were mostly women and children including physically challenged people who were unable to run and were burnt alive.”

In total more than 1,500 homes were burnt, eight churches destroyed, many hundreds of people injured and 30,000 displaced. One of those killed was the Rev. Jonathan Daluk, a pastor from Tudun Mazat village who initially fled with his family but later realized his mother and brother were back at his house. When he returned to rescue them, all three were tragically murdered.The attack was serious enough to get the attention of Fox News, where veteran African correspondent Paul Tilsley labeled it part of a “never-ending massacre of Christians being ‘killed for sport,’” in which more than 52,000 Christians have been systematically wiped out since 2009.

Fulani militia groups, which are becoming as big a menace in Nigeria as Boko Haram, have been blamed for the recent attacks. Both are extremist organizations that seek to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria governed by Sharia law.

Christians currently make up approximately 46 percent of Nigeria’s population, though their number is in decline thanks to decades of Islamist insurgency from the north. The Rev. Johnnie Moore, a former commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, speaking to Fox News, provided vital context to the senseless Christmas slaughter:

"Not a day goes by when Christians are not terrorized in western Africa in the most grotesque ways imaginable. Christians are killed for sport, especially Christian children. For every massacre which you hear about there are probably ten others which happened in the shadows. The death tolls are routinely in the hundreds. Entire villages are burnt and pillaged. Thousands of churches have been destroyed. Children and women are hunted. Countless Christians have been kidnapped. I met one pastor whose two previous churches were burned down. Yet, he stayed in harm’s way because he was determined to be a light in the darkness, even if it [costs] him his life, and it probably will.”

Moore added that “the goal of the Nigerian jihadists is to expulse the Christians towards the south, then to eliminate them.” He also warned that what was once a series of hotspots in the country is now “converging into a piecemeal Islamic State.”

Whether you live in the United States or elsewhere, contacting your local representative about the situation in Nigeria and urging your government to act is a practical way to be a voice for the voiceless. If enough people speak up, governments will have to respond….Finally, prayer makes a difference. As a pastor in Bokkos told Barnabas Aid, “We do not and will not go for any reprisals or attacks.…The Lord is our help and our refuge.”

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2024/01/nigerian-christmas-massacres/