None of the perpetrators of a deadly set of coordinated attacks on dozens of Christian communities in Nigeria’s Plateau State have been held to account despite four weeks having passed since the Christmas Eve massacre.
The death toll is now more than 300, with hundreds more injured, according to Father Andrew Dewan, director of communications in Pankshin Diocese, where most of the violence took place.
Extremists burnt down entire villages and destroyed food supplies in the bloodiest wave of violence in the country since 2018. Fulani militia groups armed with machine guns and machetes outnumbered the locals, shooting indiscriminately at men, women and children, and setting houses on fire, according to eyewitness testimonies. They also torched food storage facilities, churches and clinics.
Dewan has been looking after more than 220 survivors at St Thomas’s Catholic Church in the town of Bokkos. These and thousands of others fled nearby villages either because their homes were destroyed or because they felt unsafe after seeing families and friends slaughtered.
Dewan told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that there are up to 16 IDP camps in Bokkos alone. Most of them are run by the Church.
“In situations like this, people often rush to churches, rather than to police stations, because they don’t have confidence in government institutions,” Dewan says, adding that the authorities have done little to provide protection, with the same members of the security forces “who did not fire a bullet during the attacks” now “occasionally” providing a patrol.
“We have heard of some arrests but no prosecution, much to the frustration of survivors and victims’ families,” Dewan says. “But we are used to this charade – attackers are often arrested and later set free.”
In addition, the priest recounted how a number of farmers went back to the fields following the attacks only to find “Fulani herdsmen destroying their harvest and other food products”. Many food barns and grain stores were burnt down, aggravating an already severe food shortage.
The terrorists targeted Christian communities specifically, Dewan says, timing the attacks to cause the greatest possible distress when families were preparing to celebrate Christmas. He describes Nigerian authorities’ attempts to portray the massacre as merely herder-farmer disputes over territory as “ludicrous”. Similar attacks in neighbouring countries have been described as attempts to create an “African Islamic caliphate”.
Dewan stressed: “To say that what happened was a clash between farmers and herders is to suggest that only farmers working on their farms were attacked.”
But the attack occurred on Sunday, he highlights: “People don’t work on farms on Sunday,” while “ninety-nine percent of those killed were at home”, with some “killed in their sleep”.
Masara Kim – a local journalist whose cousin was shot dead on Christmas Eve and who then lost his brother-in-law in another attack on 17 January – told ACN that the number of perpetrators was in the hundreds.
He says that the attackers shouted “Allahu Akbar” while shooting at people, many of whom they knew personally. They stormed more than 30 villages – at least 20 of those simultaneously. Groups of women and children hiding in streams were also massacred.
Kim is convinced that the extremists targeted Christians on purpose. He referenced the 2022 murder of Ibrahim Isah, a Christian pastor of Fulani ethnicity, and other instances of Fulani herdsmen slaughtering their own people following an individual’s conversion to Christianity.
Matthew Malau, a survivor currently staying at St Thomas’s Church after losing all his property, said that he hid in “a rocky area” outside his village after hearing gunshots. He witnessed the slaughter of his 26-year-old brother and dozens of other relatives, friends and acquaintances. Small children were among those he saw killed – some hacked to death with machetes.
Jalang Mandong, a survivor who lost 10 family members in the massacre, maintains that the attacks were designed to “target Christians” and “disrupt the celebration of Christmas”, while also attempting to “take over the lands of these communities”.
Mandong said that he and other villagers initially attempted to defend their families but were overwhelmed by the sheer number of militants and not having weapons to fight back with. His father and brother were initially shot before being attacked with machetes until they died in front of his eyes.
Dewan compared the situation in Nigeria today to the experience of the first generation of Christians and “the stories of the early Church about how Christians were persecuted, as contained in the Acts of the Apostles”.
After describing his efforts to console people who have endured unspeakable traumas, Dewan concluded:
“Our task is to keep preaching and spreading hope, believing that someday things will be better.”
Photos taken by Fr Andrew Dewan at the IDP camp at St Thomas’s Catholic Church in Bokkos. (Photos courtesy ACN.)
Amy Balog is press officer for Aid to the Church in Need UK (acnuk.org). Aid to the Church in Need is a Pontifical Foundation of the Catholic Church, supporting the Catholic faithful and other Christians where they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need.
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