Insecurity in Nigeria: Islamising Christian terror, by Abu Shekara
NATHANIEL SAMUEL, a Christian from Southern Kaduna, changed his name to Mohammed and smuggled a bomb into his own church during service, intent on detonating it. The obvious motive was of course to murder as many worshippers as possible. That is indeed, reprehensible enough considering the means of achieving it, it was Samuel’s second objective that exceeded the limit of debouchery.
Massacring fellow Christians during the hour of worship, in order to make people of another faith take the blame is an enterprise only the devil himself can inspire. The question however remains whether the young man was working alone or he is acting a part in a darker, wider agenda. Samuel’s adoption of a Muslim pseudonym coincides with the desperate bid by the Church in Nigeria to christine the state of insecurity in Northern Nigeria from an endemic situation that affects citizens of all ethnicities and religious persuasion to Christian genocide.
A couple of days after the Samuel incident, the Christian Association of Nigeria made the same resolve in Jos, where the police had barely three days earlier, paraded Christians, including a priest, who are suspected of supplying arms and ammunition to criminals terrorising communities in Plateau, Benue and Kaduna States. Following the recent abduction of 24 students of girls school in a predominantly Muslim town in Kebbi State, a Nigerian citizen of the Christian faith lied to the CNN that all the captives are Christians because Islam prohibits Muslim girls from attending boarding schools.
Similar incidents of Christian-on-Christian violence are occurring with uncanny regularity, rudely disproving the narrative that is being adamantly sold to the world, especially officials and government of the United States. Regardless, the press and media that are so inclined still continuously suppress this salient aspect of insecurity in Nigeria by deliberately concealing the religious identity of Christians, who are apprehended for security-related offenses.
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Recently, Anambra State Governor, Charles Soludo, publicly declared for the second time this year, that the killings in his home region of Southeast are predominantly perpetrated by Christians against fellow Christians. But such voices of sanity that stand against the Christian genocide claim are ignored or sternly rebuked by an articulated chorus of insults and recriminations.
All this is against the background of the terror unleashed by Christian Igbo gangs on Christian communities in the Southeast. Terrorised settlements in Imo State include Orsu, Lilu, Achala, Ihiala, parts of Okigwe, Umuaka and Mbaitolu.
In these areas, the faithful have stayed away from the church because of armed incursions and occupation of their land by gangs of fellow Christian Igbos. Congregations have thinned out, due to the fear of being kidnapped or killed by their own blood-thirsty kinsmen.
In the name of fighting for freedom and self-determination, the armed terrorist group, Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) have murdered hundreds of Igbo victims in the Southeast, declared days of total sit at home in all states of the geopolitical zone and freely assassinated indigenes deemed to have sabotaged or dissented against their reign of terror.
The group is notoriously fetish and openly professes as it displays diabolic capabilities. Their rituals include burying their dead members along with severed human heads and feeding on human flesh.
Yet, IPOB elements are the most rabid agitators for the fight against terror in Northern Nigeria and the loudest in prodding America towards military intervention in Nigeria. It is clear though that Washington is not in the least unaware of the nefarious activities of IPOB against their own people al beit to note that when it comes to Northern Nigeria, the agendas of the two parties tend to concur.
The criminality of the sponsors and promoters of this campaign of falsehood on insecurity in Nigeria is not only in the deliberate targeting of their fellow Christian faithfuls but more by the ruthless sacrifice of human lives as collateral in a sinister propaganda war. That Boko Haram, ISWAP, Lakurawa, Ansaru and the marauding bandits are beasts is established fact but exploiting their notoriety for such heinous, self-serving agenda is the base of human degeneration.
Partakers in this evil enterprise may realise their short term goals and earn therein, the profits that accrue, while their foreign backers achieve their strategic interests in Nigeria. But the ultimate price of such connivance will be waiting to be incurred, long after the conventional terrorists are defeated with – or most likely – without their help.
Abu Shekara, a former Deputy Editor at Leadership Newspapers, writes from Arkila, Sokoto State.
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