In the must brutal anti-religious acts possible, terrorists likely acting in the name of Islam carried out two vicious assaults on Christian churches in Nigeria during Christmas Eve services, killing a total of 12 people.
The horrific acts were condemned from as far away as Vatican City, as Pope Benedict XVI referred to them during his traditional Christmas message from Vatican City on Tuesday, calling them “savage acts of terrorism.”
According to police in Nigeria, one assault occurred at the Church of Christ in Nations in Postikum, in Yobe province, where the unnamed gunman attacked worshipers during prayer, killing six people, including the pastor, and setting the building on fire. The other attack was at the First Baptist Church in Maiduguri, in Borno state, where a deacon and five church members were killed.
Though the terrorist group Boko Haram has not claimed responsibility for the Christmas Eve attacks, they were blamed for the deaths of 30 people last year in a wave of Christmas Day attacks in the north. Boko Haram targets Christians and Muslims it considers insufficiently Islamist.
Boko Haram has been working to overthrow the Nigerian government and impose fundamentalist Islamic law, prompting violence in the north. The northern states also face higher rates of poverty compared to the oil-rich south-east.
Pope Benedict XVI said of Nigeria, “Savage acts of terrorism continue to reap victims, particularly among Christians.”
An October report from Human Rights Watch said of Boko Haram, “Suspected members of the group have bombed or opened fire on worshipers in at least 18 churches across eight northern and central states since 2010. In Maiduguri, the group also forced Christian men to convert to Islam on penalty of death,” it said.
Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) President Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor during a phone interview yesterday with allafrica.com called the Christmas Eve attacks “bestial.”
“It is highly disturbing and very barbaric,” he said. “It is archaic. It is totally against God and anything that has to with Him. You wonder how people will go through this extent in the name of God.””Let us not continue to deny that there are jihadists, extremists and Islamists in this country; they are here. Let us agree that it is time for us to take certain steps to bring this madness to an end.”
He urged worshippers not to succumb to evil by leaving their ancestral homes.
“Let me again say that I have high respect and regard for my Muslim friends and brothers,” he added. “I’m not against Muslims. We need their help. We have been saying it and we will continue to say it: not only do we appeal to them to condemn it, we are asking that they must help us take this message to the grassroots.
“We (Christians) are not their enemies. The clerics that preach in the mosques, they should help us spread this news. With this goodwill, they will be able to flush out those people from among them.”
Oritsejafor also said Nigerian leaders must do more than condemn the violence—they must do everything to stop them.
In October, the shocking slaughter of as many as 40 people at a Nigerian college the day after student elections reverberated across Nigeria, as gunmen rounded the students up and called them by name before they shot or stabbed them.
While officials have put the death count at 25, because that’s the number of bodies that were taken to the morgue, a local resident and a school official were quoted as saying at least 40 were killed, with the remaining 15 bodies being whisked away by relatives.
The killing took place at Federal Polytechnic Mubi, a college in the northeastern town of Mubi in the state of Adamawa.
Many Nigerians suspect the brutal slaughter was the work of the militant group Boko Haram, which is fighting to establish Islamic law in Nigeria—killing an estimated 1,000 people thus far—and which came to prominence in the bordering Borno state. But there are signs that it may have been related to the student union election, which was held the day before and was marked by a division along religious and sectarian lines.
