January 2016 Persecution Magazine (3 of 5)

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JANUARY 2016

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Nigeria Hanging by a Thread

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JANUARY 2016

WEST AFRICA: SHROUDED IN VIOLENCE

By Troy Augustine

ICC visits Niger and Nigeria, where more Christians die for their faith in Christ that anywhere else on earth.

Parents and family members of the kidnapped Chibok girls gather for prayer.

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could never have appropriately prepared for what I heard and saw on my first trip to my region as Regional Manager for Africa for ICC. While I knew I was traveling to the one place in the world that has seen the most Christians murdered for their faith in the last five years, no shocking statistic can ever quite fully describe the horrors that brothers and sisters in Christ are facing every day in Nigeria and Niger.

Anyone in the world with a radio, television or access to the Internet has likely heard of Boko Haram and the grisly devastation the radical Islamic terror group continues to wage across northern Nigeria and southeastern Niger.

The world was awakened to their barbarism particularly through the popular social media campaign which demanded that Boko Haram “#BringBackOurGirls” after they kidnapped 276 mostly Christian girls from Chibok, Nigeria, in April 2014.

While it’s easy to send a tweet or watch a video, the experience becomes unavoidably real when you are sitting face to face with a father who lives each day praying through tears that God would bring Naomi back. This is the face of radical Islam’s persecution of Christians in West Africa — unimaginably tragic, crushingly intense, helplessly frustrating, but also somehow hopeful.

Sometimes the sweetest reminders of the great salvation and communion we have with Christ show up when we experience or behold extreme suffering and realize that God even uses the most severe persecution to make His people look more like Jesus.

Christians in Nigeria and Niger are persevering under the ever-present threat of radical Islam with incredible flourish and resolve.

Extremist influence sweeps across the region, resulting in Islamic riots targeting Christians in Niger in January 2015 as well as kidnapping, rape and murder at the hands of terror groups like Boko Haram.

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‘Boko Haram and Fulani are one and the same because they are working for the same goal.’

– PRESIDENT DACHOLLOM DATIRI, CHURCH OF CHRIST IN NATIONS

However, through it all, a pastor perseveres in Gospel ministry in Diffa, Niger, with a price on his head, having already lost a church member to beheading. Church leaders in Niger sacrificially forgive those mobs that burned their churches. In Nigeria, pastors bearing the mantle of leadership over churches facing systematic murder continue to preach peace and perseverance.

My journey across the region from Niamey,

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Niger, to Abuja, Kaduna and Jos, Nigeria, can be described most exquisitely through the several heart-rending stories of survival and deepened faith the Lord is working through His persecuted people.

Kaduna state, Nigeria, has been rocked

by Islamic extremist attacks in two forms — constant Boko Haram attacks in the North and extermination of Christian farmers in the South by radicalized (Islamic) Fulani tribesJANUARY 2016

Top Left ICC provided much needed sandals to displaced children in Jos, Nigeria.

Top Right Children in Niger are all smiles after receiving clothing and toys from ICC.

Bottom Left A Bible sits in the remains of a church burned down during the riots in Niger.

Bottom Right An ICC staff member and Nigerian pastors survey a church burned by Boko Haram. *Names have been changed to protect the security of believers

men.

It was in Kaduna State where we jumped into the deep end of the pool of Christian persecution in Nigeria.

When you’re sitting with people who still need to regularly undergo surgery to remove shrapnel from underneath their skin three years after surviving a Boko Haram bombing, you come to expect despairing stories. You think to yourself: “How would I handle the trial they are enduring?”

However, God’s evident work in peoples’ lives becomes all the more beautiful when, in the throes of traumatic recovery, Christians continually praise the Lord for the opportunity to magnify the name of Christ as joyful survivors of persecution.

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Joy and trauma are both incredibly present emotions for Christians in West Africa.

On one hand, nearly all of the Christians we met expressed some form of great happiness in being counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ.

On the other hand, the ever-present danger that they live in leaves them in a constant state of hyper-vigilance, experiencing all the symptoms of PTSD. They are exhausted, emotionally stressed and worn out to the point that they hardly even emote anymore.

That was true of Arthur* from southern Kaduna, who lost his father when radical Fulani militia attacked his village along with five others simultaneously on one night.

Arthur’s persecution experience is terrifying.

Though he escaped his house alive before the attackers arrived, his aged father could not escape. Arthur hid within earshot of his house and experienced the sounds of his beloved father’s last words.

“Don’t kill me for no reason,” he heard his father cry out before the gunshots. His plea echoes in Arthur’s mind, daily struggling with guilt and despair.

Arthur’s story is all too common in northern Nigeria, where Christians face persecution on two fronts. In the far Northeast, Boko Haram ravages mostly Christian settlements, and the stories from survivors tell of the terror that their own Muslim neighbors have even sold them out during an attack.

Throughout Nigeria’s central, Middle Belt states of Plateau, Kaduna, Benue, Taraba and Nassarawa, radical Muslim Fulani militias armed with gasoline, AK-47s and machetes are systematically depopulating the region of Christians. The tragedy should be understood as nothing short of a religious cleansing at the hands of Islamists.

The frequency, brutality and coordinated nature of the attacks from Fulani tribesmen reveal that there is much more to the story of violence in the Middle Belt than the media has revealed.

The Nigerian government has persistently described these raids through the lens of historical tribal disputes over land for farming versus cattle grazing. However, when Christian farmers regularly face this scale of atrocity, it becomes clear that the key part of the story is being hidden.

The Christians we met in Nigeria view Boko Haram and radical Fulani as an identical threat.

“Boko Haram and the Fulani are one and the same because they are working for the same goal,” Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) President Dachollom Datiri told ICC. “Their agenda is to take over the whole of Nigeria with Islam.”

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NIGER: ONE YEAR LATER

‘They covered the motorcycles with bottles of fuel and used them to set everything on fire.’

– PASTOR’S WIFE ON JANUARY RIOTS

By Troy Augustine

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s I stepped through the sanctuary of Round Point Baptist Church in Niger’s capital city of Niamey in August 2015, I was bombarded with memories of the attacks of January 17, 2015, as if I had witnessed them myself.

The cracked and charred ceramic floor tiles made brittle by intense fire crunched beneath my feet.

The metal-sheet roof that once protected the worship space from weather was now heaped in a rusted and twisted pile in the corner.

Even if someone didn’t know that this was once a church building, blackened musical instruments, mangled pews, and hollowed out sound boards strewn across the floor tell the story of a place once filled with praises to God and preaching every Sunday morning.

Round Point represents a microcosm of what Niger’s Christian minority lived through for one horrible weekend in mid-January one year ago.

ICC marks the anniversary of riots that raced across Niger, from Zinder to Goure, from Maradi to Niamey — an entire nation that for a

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moment reached a fever pitch of hatred directed at Christians. Sadly, Christ’s body in Niger is still picking up the pieces, still suffering, and the scars remain fresh one full year into their path of perseverance.

Persecution Erupted The world was stunned on January 7, 2015, when radical Muslim terrorists stormed the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, murdering 11 people and injuring others.

While global media provided wall-to-wall coverage of the European tragedy and the mourning that followed, this obscure and destitute francophone nation in the western half of the Sahara Desert was seething and about to explode.

The violence started in Zinder on January 16, 2015, and, just one day later, had reached Niamey. By the end of the weekend, at least five Christians had been murdered, dozens more injured, and scores of churches burned down.

Angry Muslim mobs took their anger over the Charlie Hebdo “blasphemy” of the

Muslim prophet Muhammad out on their minority Christian neighbors.

Once the hatred metastasized into physical expression, Nigerian Muslims who had lived in relative peace with Christians for decades marauded Niger’s cities in droves searching for victims.

They were armed with axes, cutlasses, clubs and gasoline drums, seeking to destroy everything Christian they could find.

“They were breaking, beating, destroying everything,” one pastor’s wife told ICC. “They covered the motorcycles with bottles of fuel and used them to set everything on fire.”

Rioters burglarized Pastor Alex’s* church while he, his wife and his two daughters hid in the bathroom.

Three times, different waves of attackers discovered the family hiding in the bathroom. The first two decided to continue looting the church property, and the family survived. By the third wave, Pastor Alex was convinced they were going to die.

“My family and I thought they were going to set us ablaze with their fuel and matches, but before they could do that, the police

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Top Left

When most of the church was burned down, these inspiring words remained visible on one of the few walls still standing: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)

Top Right

Wife of pastor relives the tragic assault as she describes it in detail to our staff members in the field.

Bottom Left

Pastor explains the destruction at Round Point Baptist Church.

ICC then provided them with new musical instruments for worship.

Bottom Right

A man surveys the remains of a burned church after the January 2014 riots in Niger. *Names have been changed to protect the security of believers.

came and rescued us,” he said.

The result of the devastating attacks left gaping holes in church buildings and numerous church roofs perforated and charred.

Pastors all over Niger grieved the loss of some of their most prized possessions: their theology libraries. Countless Christians were left homeless when their houses were targeted and destroyed.

“Everything that took 40 years to build has vanished,” evangelist Alice* told ICC. And yet, one year later, the Church of Jesus Christ perseveres in Niger through the continued suffering.

JANUARY 2016

Rising From the Ashes Despite the destruction, Round Point still holds two services every Sunday in the same compound serving two congregations.

The French-speaking and Yoruba-speaking church bodies are, for now, assembling in a temporary shelter next to the destroyed sanctuary, where they’ve erected a semi-permanent roof and set up pews just inside the walls.

Pastor Alex prepares for Sunday’s sermon with the most important book that remains in his library: his Bible. His Anglican denomination responded with the love of Christ after

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the tragedy, financing much of the structure’s rebuild.

Countless Christians in Niger continue to meet in perilously unstable, crumbling buildings to worship God. The plaster that once covered the walls at the Pentecostal Church in Koudia district, Niamey, is completely gone, but indelible reminders of God’s grace and faithfulness remain.

You have to look very closely, but you can still spot one faded, French-text banner across the back wall of the sanctuary in a tan shade.

It’s just enough lighter than the dust-colored

sandstone wall that you can still make out the message.

It used to be boldly obvious, declared in bright crimson paint against the white plaster backdrop and serving as a steady reminder for a Christian congregation in times of prospering. But now, the Bible verse seems even more fitting as its quieter, yet steady presence preaches to Christians in Koudia recovering from persecution.

“Ma grâce te suffit, car ma puissance se déploie dans la faiblesse,” or, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV).

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