An expert on Islamist terrorism has expressed alarm after gunmen stormed a church in southwest Nigeria on Pentecost Sunday, killing as many as 50 worshippers, including women and children.
Witnesses said the gunmen detonated explosives before opening fire on the churchgoers. Officials were still calculating the final death toll days later.
The brutal attack on St Francis Xavier Church, in the city of Owo, is but the latest episode in a long line of violence against Christians in Nigeria. Its additional significance, however, is that it took place in a part of the country that had largely escaped such violence in recent years – raising concerns that violence could be spreading to areas once considered safe for Christians.
For years, the most widespread attacks unfolded in northeast Nigeria, as the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram executed a relentless campaign of violence against Christians and churches in that region. The hills of northern Nigeria eventually became a landscape of burned-down churches and looted homes. In many cases, roving militants had climbed onto church roofs to rip down crosses before burning the buildings to the ground.
But while churches sat in ashes, believers returned to worship. Some gathered in makeshift huts built from trees cut down by young church members. Others set up chairs in the shell of their torched buildings. In a temporary shelter built by a congregation in the city of Gombi, for example, churchgoers hung a banner next to their destroyed church building, announcing the theme for their summer Bible study from Romans: ‘We are more than conquerors.’
Illia Djadi, Open Doors senior analyst on freedom of religion and belief in sub-Saharan Africa said: ‘This is a worrying development. We have never seen a full-scale terrorist attack like this before in the largely Christian south.
‘It was a carefully-planned assault. And, by choosing a church on Pentecost Sunday, the attackers were clearly targeting Christians.
‘The current government has failed to provide adequate security. If this chaos isn’t checked we will see mass displacement across the region and an international refugee crisis to rival what we have seen from Syria or Afghanistan. The whole world needs to sit up and take notice of what’s happening in Nigeria before it’s too late.’
