Boko Haram ‘engaged in genocide against Christians’

CATHOLIC CHURCH officials in northern Nigeria’s Diocese of Maiduguri are warning of “genocide” against the Christian minority in the region, where daily attacks, killings and abductions by Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram are continuing unabated. Since 2009, Christians in the country’s north-eastern states have been under siege from the well armed, highly trained and massively funded Islamists.

In the latest atrocity on Sunday 29 June, the terrorists attacked churches and villages in Borno State, killing more than 30 people. The attacks occurred about six miles from Chibok town, where more than 200 schoolgirls, mostly Christians, were abducted in April and are still missing.

Four churches, including the Protestant Church of Christ of Nigeria, the Pentecostal Deeper Life Bible Church and the 1920 American missionary-built Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa were destroyed on 29 June. More than 2,000 people have been killed, this year alone, in the Boko Haram campaign of murder.

“What is worrying is the silence of Government on the ongoing genocide of the Christian minority,” Fr John Bakeni, the secretary of the Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri told The Tablet. “We cannot keep track or records of the attacks. It’s terrible.” Bishop Oliver Doeme of Maiduguri said “the human mind could not understand what is happening.”