140 Christian children were kidnapped from a Baptist boarding school by Muslim gunmen in north-western Nigeria on Monday. This is the fourth kidnapping from a Christian school in only a few months.

The kidnappers opened fire on security guards and stormed the Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna state in the early hours of Monday, forcefully taking 140 students away at gunpoint.

Muslim gunmen in Nigeria have kidnapped about 1,000 students, mostly from Christian schools, since December of 2020. Local officials have negotiated and paid ransom to get most of the children back, but there are still more than 150 that remain missing.

Most news outlets are hiding the facts of this story – the facts are that the armed gunmen in all of these kidnapping cases are Muslim and the victims are mostly Christian. This is not a coincidence and the silence is not an accident. More Christians have been slaughtered and abducted in Nigeria in the last 18 months than anywhere else on earth and the media is silent.

What is perhaps even more disturbing is the silence of the Christian Body around the world.

Christian children are being targeted for financial gain. Christian girls are being targeted for exploitation. We cannot continue to let this be swept under the rug.

Bethel Baptist High School is a co-education college, established by the Baptist church in 1991, at Maramara village in Chikun district outside the state capital, Kaduna. The children and their families are in our prayers.

BTJ is doing a podcast today with our partners on the ground in Nigeria, which will be posted shortly on our website.