Nigerian Instability Grows as Abductions and Murders Continue Unchecked

Nomadic herdsmen and terror groups target religious minorities with little response from the government.

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Standing before a gathering of mourning parishioners, Bishop Emmanuel Badejo of the diocese of Oyo, Nigeria, delivered a homily he’d hoped he’d never have to give.

“In these coffins, a part of Nigeria lies dead,” he said at the funeral Mass of 40 Catholic worshippers killed when unknown attackers opened fire and detonated explosives at a Pentecost celebration 12 days prior, on June 5. “Because lying down here with these deceased ones are the joys and hopes and aspirations of their families and loved ones, of the Church of God, of the various communities from where they come, and indeed of Nigeria.”

“So I ask: For how much longer shall this continue?” he implored.

Just a day after Badejo’s homily, on June 18, eight more Christian worshippers were killed and 38 others were abducted in attacks on Catholic and Baptist churches—this time in Nigeria’s northern state of Kaduna. The suspected perpetrators: Fulani herdsmen, a pastoral and predominantly Muslim ethnic group from northern Nigeria and nearby countries. As the nomads have moved southward in recent years, they’ve abducted, raped, and murdered members of the Christian farming communities along their route.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Dave T

    Thank you for this story. More world news is always good!!

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  2. Avatar photo
    Xaveria

    About ten years ago I near west Nigeria for several years. Fulani tribal groups were interspersed around the area, and for the most part, everyone got along well. They were almost always horsemen and herdsman, unlike the farming tribes around them. There was even a local saying reflecting their beauty, as they tended to be taller and fairer than other Cameroonians. If someone looked at me and said, "One would say a Fulani woman!" it was a very flattering compliment.

    There were troubling signs even then. Unlike other tribes (there are more than 200 in Cameroon) there was very little interaction and intermarriage with the Fulani and their neighbors. When I visited them on a tourist trip, they spoke of other Cameroonians as "the locals," even though they had been in the area for generations, and they had posters of Osama Bin Laden up in their huts.

    The Fulani are lighter and taller because they originated much further north. They mostly arrived in that area roughly 120-150 years ago, during a fairly brutal wave of Islamic conquest in the region. Indeed, in the far north of Cameroon, animist and Christian tribes mostly exist only in the highlands, where the steep hills nullified the Fulani advantage on horseback.

    If you have ever heard of the Lake Nyos disaster in 1986, you will know that over a thousand people died suddenly around a lake. They were found asphyxiated, along with every other animal in the vicinity. Scientists would later attribute this to a pocket of gas that built up under the volcanic lake, a bubble that probably erupted out into a deadly cloud once every few hundred years. Almost everyone who died that day was Fulani -- the local people would not go near the lake, which their folklore insisted was a place of evil.

    I guess that there's not a lot of point to this comment, other than "mildly interesting things about the Fulani" So I'll add my own opinion -- I found the Fulani to be a lovely people, like any people, when I knew them in good times. However, there are deep and complex pockets of ancient culture in Africa that outsiders do not begin to grok, and not all of them are peaceful. I am very worried that, as times grow harder, we'll see more and more articles like this one.

    America needs to do what we need to do against Russia. But we have to recognize that no one is Africa deserves the resulting famine and attending horsemen, and the long-term damage done there needs to be set against other interests. If we're not going to lift the blockade on Russian fuel and food (and I don't think we should) we need to pull out everything we have -- subsidies, oil drilling, everything -- to cushion the blow for the rest of the world. We need to get creative.






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  3. Linda Murphy

    And those gathered beneath the Throne cry out "how long, oh Lord? How long?"

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  4. John Easter

    I didn’t know this was going on. Especially, didn’t know that about a Christian was dying every two hours in Nigeria. Truly horrific, and I pray for Bishop Badejo and the many others living through this time. It’s terrible as you write that the Fulani’s know they can abduct important men and children and torture them however and get money from the communities hurt as they hope they can get their members back. Knowing the police or military is unable/ unwilling to help them.

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  5. Avatar photo
    TJ

    "All day long we are accounted for as sheep for the slaughter."

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  6. Avatar photo
    MatthewRobin

    If the situation was reversed (Christians attacking Muslims) then I think the Biden (and Trump) administration would respond differently.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Linda Beggs

    “In 2021 alone, more than 4,650 Christians were slain in Nigeria—roughly one every two hours.”

    I found this information shocking and horrifying.

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