Constant targets

Editor’s note: Our cover story in the last issue featured ground-level reporting on Boko Haram’s murderous assaults in Nigeria. But there’s more to the story, so here are previously unreported specifics about other Muslim attacks on Christian villagers. We realize that Christians in the United States face so many challenges that the appetite for news from abroad is limited, but at WORLD we’re committed to letting you know about the desperate needs of our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world. We plan to have more reports soon from inside China, from ISIS-threatened areas, and from southeast Asia, and we hope to step up our Africa coverage next year. Thanks for reading. —Marvin Olasky

JOS, Nigeria—An afternoon visit to a cluster of villages in Nigeria’s fertile Middle Belt offers a striking snapshot of rural life in the country’s Plateau State: a bustling outdoor market, a cadre of street vendors, and a quadruple murder scene.

For many Nigerians, markets and murder form realities of everyday life.

The Islamist terror group Boko Haram grabs most attention for its brutal attacks and intense persecution of Christians in northern Nigeria. Even now, pastors and church members brave dangerous conditions to return to war-torn areas and re-establish homes and congregations (see “Out of the ashes,” July 25, 2015).

But Boko Haram militants aren’t the only assailants wreaking havoc in northern and central Nigeria. Christian villagers also report ongoing attacks by Fulani herdsmen toting powerful weaponry. (Fulani comprise an ethnic group in Nigeria and West Africa.)

Here in central Nigeria, the nomadic, Muslim herdsmen often graze cattle on the outskirts of simple farms tended by Christian villagers. Though the close proximity has led to some clashes in the past, villagers say they’ve witnessed a frightening trend in recent years:

Some Fulani herdsmen now regularly attack Christian villages using sophisticated weapons—including AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades—that mirror the arsenals of militant groups like Boko Haram.

Many wonder if Fulani assailants obtain the high-powered weapons from Islamic jihadists seeking to expand a campaign of terror and conquest. Others say the arms could flow across Nigeria’s porous borders in a global black market or come from corrupt Nigerian officials.

Persecution watchdog Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported at least 500 people died in central Nigeria in violent attacks involving Fulani herdsmen since the end of May. Though Fulani attacks garner less outside attention, they represent another front in an ongoing war against many Nigerian Christians, and a level of firepower most villagers can’t match.

That leaves thousands of Nigerian Christians struggling for survival against an expanding Islamic insurgency and battling the trauma of living through a war with no end in sight.

ON THE AFTERNOON I VISITED the quadruple murder scene in a rural village in Plateau State, the Fulani attacks had unfolded a few hours earlier, as Christians in the village of Sop began their morning chores.

Most had scattered when they heard the familiar sound of gunmen storming the village of simple clay homes.

But four villagers—all husbands and fathers—were caught off guard during a morning trek through the bush to collect water. (The well in the village was damaged.) Villagers say gunmen ambushed the men and fatally shot them on sight. The perpetrators vanished.

So before breakfast on a Tuesday morning in late June, the Christian village of Sop was mourning the loss of four men. By midafternoon, four women were burying their husbands and absorbing the reality they were widows and their children were fatherless.

The scene was jarring, but not uncommon.

Indeed, Morning Star News reported a flurry of Fulani attacks on villages in central and northern Nigeria over the last two years and said the country’s National Emergency Management Agency estimated some 1,500 Christians had died in such attacks in 2014.

Fulani herdsmen reportedly killed more than 70 Christians in Plateau State in May of this year, according to Morning Star. (Herdsmen often attack on Sundays during worship services, looting, robbing, and burning churches and homes.) The dead included Luka Gwom, a local pastor, and at least one member of his congregation. The church member had married two weeks earlier.

Mark Lipdo of the Stefanos Foundation says villagers and sources across central and northern Nigeria sent his organization at least 300 text messages and phone calls about armed attacks on Christians last year. Many included reports of Fulani herdsmen raiding Christian villages.

A New Year’s Eve entry from last year’s call log said locals in a Plateau State village reported “Fulani beheaded one of their men … and shot another dead. ‘Presently, it’s gunshots everywhere.’”

During a June staff meeting at the Stefanos Foundation’s offices in the Plateau State capital of Jos, a worker looked up from his buzzing cell phone: “There’s been an attack on the village of Sop.”

The Christian organization tries to confirm such reports, and staffers often visit attack sites. It’s risky work, but during the morning staff meeting Lipdo told the workers: “Sometimes we have to count the cost and ask ourselves: ‘Are we better than those who are dead?’”

IN THE VILLAGE OF SOP, a small group of local men stood ready to talk about the dead, just hours after the murders.

When we arrived that afternoon, the young men waited in a small circle under a sprawling tree next to a burned house. The Fulani had been here just weeks before, burning homes and other property. The torched frame of the village chief’s car sat nearby.

Lush trees encircled the village, and the men worried about reports Fulani gunmen were still at loose in the area. One man pointed to a distant hill and said the herdsmen had guns with scopes they could use to fire into the village.

But despite such vivid sights, what was missing was even more striking. In this village near a state capital, where black-clad gunmen had donned masks and killed four men in cold blood less than six hours earlier, few signs of a fresh crime scene remained: No flashing lights or yellow tape. No investigators or local reporters. No police interviewing villagers or standing guard.

A few soldiers were on-site, but most huddled in one spot near the entrance of the village at a nearby road. Children walked by on the red clay, and locals toted items to the local market.

Meanwhile, near a hill in the distance, villagers said a local pastor was conducting a series of four impromptu funerals, as the new widows buried their dead husbands.

The youth secretary from the village church—a congregation of the Church of Christ in Nations—recounted some details of the men cut down. All were members of the local church:

I asked the youth leader if he knew the men personally. “Yes,” he replied. “Duong was my cousin.” As we talked about the gunmen, a single shot rang out behind a line of thick trees in the distance. The youth leader didn’t flinch. “See,” he said. “They’re somewhere over there.”

Ask Nigerians if they consider arming themselves against such attacks, and their answers often are similar.

Though illegal guns flood local areas, Nigerian laws make owning a gun legally difficult for many. Even when some villagers do obtain guns, they say, soldiers or police often confiscate the weapons or hassle owners if they discover them—a reality worsened by government corruption and Muslim oppression of Christian minorities in many areas. (And buying an automatic weapon on the black market is a prospect far too expensive for most villagers.)

Locals do post lookouts in spots around villages to send verbal warnings if assailants approach, and Lipdo says some try to use clubs or knives in their defense: “But if someone comes to attack you with an AK-47, you’re dead.”

Ultimately, many Nigerians say the prospect of sufficiently arming a rural village or town against surprise attacks by highly armed Boko Haram or Fulani militants is a futile proposition. In warlike conditions, said one villager, “We need the military to protect us.”

The Nigerian military has shown that’s possible.

Though former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan did little to combat militants during most of his tenure, a belated assault on Boko Haram early this year proved effective: Military forces routed militants, rescued captives, and captured territory from the terrorists.

Boko Haram remains fiercely destructive. The group has killed more than 800 people in recent weeks, including dozens of Muslims in Ramadan attacks. But the military action shows that a well-armed, strategic force is critical to routing the terrorists and protecting local populations.

Nigerians are waiting to see if the new president, Muhammadu Buhari, will maintain his pledge to pursue the massive task of purging military corruption and fighting Boko Haram. Some are also waiting to see if Buhari—an ethnic Fulani—will condemn and fight incursions by Fulani herdsmen.

On a local level, I asked villagers in Sop if they called the police after the murders that morning. “Yes, they came immediately,” one said. How quickly? “One hour,” he replied. The villagers said they don’t know of any arrests local police have made after a series of Fulani attacks over the last year.

That’s frustrating to advocates like Lipdo. He says he alerts Nigerian officials to reported attacks, and that he once delivered gun casings to authorities for forensic testing to trace the source of guns. He says Nigerian officials weren’t interested, and that a staffer at the U.S. State Department said the agency couldn’t help with such efforts either.

Though tracking nomadic herdsmen is difficult, Lipdo says the responsibility remains with the Nigerian military. “If they can follow Boko Haram anywhere, there’s no reason they can’t follow the Fulani,” he says. “They just turn their back on the atrocities.”

MEANWHILE, THE ATROCITIES LEAVE CHRISTIANS across central and northern Nigeria surviving in a continual state of trauma.

Villagers in Sop said they constantly expect attacks, and near the end of our conversation they urged us to leave before the day grew later. As night falls, they said, nearly everyone sleeps in the open so they can hear if gunmen approach. “You sleep outside,” said one villager. “And when they come, you run.”

Stefanos Foundation distributes a book about trauma developed by Wycliffe to Nigerian pastors and church leaders. Congregations use the book to consider dilemmas they might face, including:

“What if enemies say you must denounce Christ in order to stay alive?”

“What if a soldier tells a man to rape a woman on pain of death?”

“What if soldiers make a person eat human flesh on pain of death?”

Each question includes Bible passages to help Christians respond to the excruciating scenarios.

Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) also trains local pastors in conflict areas to help Christians cope with trauma. At a local church in the northeast town of Yola, a pair of local pastors said they planned to take the Bible-based material back to their communities devastated by Boko Haram.

A pastor from Gwoza—a northeastern town still terrorized by militants—said the training helped him deal with his own trauma of losing four family members and trying to protect his wife and eight children.

The pastor said he’s now hearing from some of his 200 church members scattered across the country. Some deal with grief, some cope with physical pain, and others confront spiritual agony: He says some have confessed they denied Christ when confronted by Boko Haram.

When those church members ask if there’s forgiveness for them, the pastor says, he tells them, “Christ loves sinners. And His arms are open to take them back in true repentance.”

Some Christians cope with trauma by serving others. Habila Adamu refused to recant when Boko Haram militants searched for Christians in his Potiskum neighborhood in 2012. The gunmen told him to kneel and demanded he embrace Islam. Adamu answered: “Nothing will separate me from the love of Christ.”

The militants shot him in the face. Remarkably, Adamu survived.

On a recent Sunday morning, Adamu preached at a worship service in a town removed from where he once lived. During the week, he operates a small market (with the help of VOM) and speaks to Christians about the importance of perseverance. When Nigerian Christians speak about the future, they often say they “want to make heaven.”

Two weeks after our conversation, Adamu’s sister, niece, and nephew died when a suicide bomber attacked their church in his hometown. His sister, Tabitha, had sent her twin daughters home to retrieve the offering she had forgotten. The girls survived the blast.

Adamu’s words from two weeks earlier rang prophetic. “This thing may not stop,” he said after church. “But we want all Christians to stand. Let us die with the gospel, and let us die as Christians.”

It was the same hope expressed by the choir in a worship song that morning: “Forward, forward, thus says the Lord / Fear not, faint not, trust in His Word / He will guard us, He will defend / Till the strife shall end.”