[Image from International Christian Concern]
On April 13th, only last Sunday, Christians came together in the village of Zikke in northern Nigeria to celebrate Palm Sunday. As they gathered to praise and worship together, they were attacked by Islamic Fulani extremists, who slaughtered at least 54 Christians. Their attack was brutal.
They went on to terrorise the surrounding village in an attack that eyewitnesses said lasted more than an hour, leaving 103 households destroyed and the entire village displaced.
“A mass burial is currently underway. There is outrage in the land at the moment,” resident Joseph Chudu Yonkpa said.
This small farming village is just one of many across northern Nigeria that has experienced violence in recent years. Villagers reported what has become commonplace during these attacks – a delayed military response as security forces show bias, disarming local Christian youth but not the Fulani attackers.
Nigeria has become known as the “world’s center of Christian martyrs,” with some of the highest recorded deaths due to faith-related violence, and is currently named the deadliest country in the world for Christians.
Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto remarked with sadness that the attack was “another tributary of blood” that will “link up with older tributaries and continue their flow slowly but surely into an invisible ocean of blood that now threatens to swallow the Plateau.”
This Easter Sunday as we join in celebration of Resurrection Sunday, let us also remember the families of those who were martyred and those who are now displaced since the attack.
