Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Nigeria’s Christians are relentlessly under attack

Dozens of Christian worshippers, including several children, were killed in a gun raid on a church in Nigeria’s Owo town on Sunday. Initial estimates place the death toll at around least 70 parishioners but that number is set to rise, given that the church in question, St Francis Catholic Church, has one of the largest parishes in the southwestern state of Ondo.

Nigeria is experiencing an epidemic of terror attacks. Over the last six months, gunmen have killed 48 in the northwestern Zamfara state, massacred over 100 villagers in Plateau state, and raided trains and buses leaving dozens dead and hundreds missing. At least 3,000 Nigerians were killed and 1,500 abducted in the first quarter of 2022 alone, according to the Nigeria Security Tracker.

Most of the recent attacks are carried out by ‘bandits’: local militants that are currently spearheading Nigeria’s abduction spree. However, just as local kidnapping gangs have borrowed Boko Haram’s modus operandi to abduct schoolchildren, various militants are increasingly following the jihadist rulebook to spread terror in Nigeria.

Various militants are increasingly following the jihadist rulebook to spread terror in Nigeria

Jihadists affiliated with Boko Haram or the Islamic State in West African Province (ISWAP) – which on 6 June reportedly torched trucks and abducted passengers in the village of Lawan Mainari in northeastern Borno – have been the predominant perpetrators of terror attacks in the country. This is despite an ongoing turf war between the two groups.

Nigeria’s jihadist groups are being abetted in their quest to uphold militant Islam by radical Islamist mobs, with a growing number of lynching incidents triggered by accusations of blasphemy. It is Christians, who form just under half (46 per cent) of the population to the 53 per cent of Muslims, who have borne the brunt of this violence.

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