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Open Doors’ Natalie Blair says independent data from Nigeria shows “Christians can be targeted by radical extremists, and radical extremists can also kill Muslims who do not conform to their radical ideology.” But Blair, a senior member of Open Doors Advocacy team, told Fox News Digital, “Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) have explicitly and repeatedly declared Christians as targets. And many victims have told us that when Fulani militants attack they don’t just shout ‘Allahu Akbar’, (God is Great), they yell, ‘we will destroy all Christians.’
Blair added: “According to the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, data of civilians killed — exempting out the military and terrorist deaths — in northern Nigeria is unequivocal: more Christians are killed by the extremists than Muslims — if you are a Christian you are 6.5 times more likely to be killed than a Muslim. This does not make the suffering of a Muslim less significant, it just makes it less likely.”
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, recently told a Nigerian newspaper that Ted Cruz should “stop these malicious, contrived lies” over the killings. (Ton Molina/Getty Images)
Bishop Wilfred Anagbe’s Makurdi Diocese is almost exclusively Christian. But the constant and escalating attacks by Muslim Fulani militants led him to testify at a congressional hearing in March in Washington, saying there is “a long-term Islamic agenda (in Nigeria) to homogenize. The population has been implemented over several presidencies through a strategy to reduce and eventually eliminate the Christian identity of half of the population all over Nigeria. These terrorists are going about on a jihad and conquering territories and renaming them accordingly.”
Idris was dismissive of the Bishop’s Congressional testimony: “let me say that the Bishop’s position is an extreme one. It’s not true. The Nigerian government has debunked that in the past.”
Funerals for some 27 Christians who were reportedly killed by Islamist Fulani tribesmen in the village of Bindi Ta-hoss, Nigeria. (Courtesy: Christian Solidarity International (CSI))
Open Doors’ Blair, with access to Nigerian villagers, responded, “We must listen to the voices of those who have experienced the violence firsthand. People on the ground do not trust that anyone will pay for these violent crimes. This is because they have seen hundreds of suspects arrested over the years and then most of them released, having never been charged or brought to trial.”
Blair concluded, “the right to life, guaranteed under Section 33 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution, is meaningless unless the state acts decisively to punish those who violate it. The ongoing culture of impunity will only result in more bloodshed and continue to erode public trust in the rule of law.”
