Islamic extremist group Boko Haram released a video on 22 September showing the execution of two Christian aid workers.
Lawrence Duna Dacighir and Godfrey Ali Shikagham, both members of the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) in Plateau state, were shown kneeling while three masked, armed men stood behind them. The two young men, who had gone to Maiduguri to help build shelters for people displaced by Islamic extremist violence, were then shot from behind.
One of the terrorists said that they have vowed to kill every Christian they capture, in revenge for Muslims killed in past religious conflicts in Nigeria. Dacighir and Shikagham, were originally from Plateau state’s Mangu County. They were captured by Boko Haram, now called the Islamic State in West Africa Province, as they carried out their work in displaced persons camps.
It is not clear from the video, temporarily posted on YouTube, when the two men were executed. Their identities were confirmed by a relative, the Revd John Pofi, a COCIN pastor. In a letter to the United Nations Secretary General, attorney Emmanuel Ogebe of the US–Nigeria Law Group, a consulting firm with an emphasis on human rights, expressed concern that the Nigerian Government did not condemn the killing of the two men. They had been helping to provide shelter for displaced Nigerians. Ogebe asserted in his letter that the killing of the two Christians was Boko Haram’s first execution on the basis of ‘ethnic cleansing’. The two victims were from the predominantly Christian Mwalghavul ethnic group.
