2 Christians Ambushed, Hacked to Death After Leaving Evangelical Church Service in Nigeria
Islamic radical herdsmen ambushed and hacked to death two Christians in central Nigeria as they left an evangelical church service and were making their way home.
Morning Star News reported on Thursday that Ibrahim Weyi, 45, and Larry More, 53, were attacked by the Muslim Fulani herdsmen Sunday evening as they were going home on a motorcycle following worship at the Evangelical Church Winning All in Kwall village, Plateau state.
The radicals also injured another Christian, 23-year-old Samuel Weyi, who survived and is being treated at a hospital in Jos.
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"Fulani herdsmen have continued to kill innocent Christians in our villages, yet the Nigerian government has not taken proactive measures to end the onslaught," said resident Lawerence Zango.
The Rev. Sunday Zibeh, pastor of the ECWA church in Nzharuvo, Miango, said that 11 Christians have been killed by the Fulani in the Bassa area since February.
And those are just a portion of the hundreds of believers who have been slaughtered across the country since the start of the year, with the Fulani increasing their deadly attacks month by month.
"In these cases, the victims were either ambushed and killed by the herdsmen or attacked in their homes at night," Zibeh said. "The sad reality is that the Nigerian government headed by President Muhammadu Buhari, himself a Muslim and a Fulani man, has not acted in any way to end these attacks."
Christians of different denominations have insisted that Buhari is not doing enough to protect the people. Following the murder of two priests in a raid that killed 19 people during a Catholic mass in Benue State in April, the Catholic Bishops' Conference in Nigeria said in a statement:
"We are sad. We are angry. We feel totally exposed and most vulnerable. Faced with these dark clouds of fear and anxiety, our people are daily being told by some to defend themselves. But defend themselves with what?"
The bishops added that Christians "feel violated and betrayed in a nation that we have all continued to sacrifice and pray for. We collectively feel abandoned and betrayed."
Buhari called the attack on believers in church "particularly despicable."
"Violating a place of worship, killing priests and worshipers is not only vile, evil and satanic, it is clearly calculated to stoke up religious conflict and plunge our communities into endless bloodletting," he said at the time.
Still, the Catholic leaders stressed that regardless of the reason why Buhari is failing to stop the killings, "he should no longer continue to preside over the killing fields and mass graveyard that our country has become."
The frustration has been echoed by the predominantly Christian Irigwe Development Association, whose members have been killed and suffered greatly at the hands of the Fulani.
"The Irigwe nation feels compelled to once more raise the alarm over the continuous loss of lives from attacks on innocent villages," said in April Sunday Abdu, president of the association.
"You are aware that we buried 25 people on the day we had set out to bury four out of the five [who] were killed on the night of the president's visit to the state, this is in addition to the ones we have buried from series of attacks since January, not to mention the number of homes we have lost from such attacks and the destruction of farmlands which has ensured a looming hunger."
