Nigeria’s terror survivors share their stories

This violence is not gruesome fiction, it’s reality.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

A Nigerian man looks up towards the camera, behind him is dusty ground

Manga survived an attempted beheading.

Open Doors.

This article contains distressing content.

Something is happening. And nobody is talking about it.

Nigeria, the big and beautiful ‘Giant of Africa’, is becoming a place of increasing terror for the hundred million Christians who call it home. Since 2000, 62,000 people have been killed for having a Christian faith. Eight-thousand people were killed in 2023 alone. These staggering numbers mean that more Christians are being killed in Nigeria than in every other country combined.

The violence is as extreme as it gets. And yet, very few of us know that it’s happening.

When it comes to the Nigerian government and media, the relentlessly brutal attacks are seemingly hidden in plain sight; undeniable and yet somehow unstoppable. While, in the UK, we appear to be entirely unaware. This violence is out of sight, and therefore largely out of mind. The reasons why are admittedly complex, as outlined by Chris Wadibia. Nevertheless, the violence being carried out toward the Nigerian people, particularly those living in the Northern states, surely deserves our attention.

Earlier this year, I took a trip to Northern Nigeria. While I was there, I got to know a group of people who had endured unimaginable trauma, largely because of their Christian faith. Every day, they would bravely tell their stories – who they were and what they had experienced. Every day, I looked into the faces of children who had lost parents, parents who had lost children, husbands who had lost wives, and wives who had lost husbands. All of a sudden, the bewildering statistics were people before me – people who were having to live with the images of their loved ones being ‘butchered’ before their very eyes. Their villages being burnt down. Their lives being turned upside down by militants with assault rifles and machetes.

The only reference I had for stories such as the ones I was hearing were apocalyptic movies. But these things happened. They happened to the people sitting across from me. This violence is not the stuff of gruesome fiction, it’s the stuff of reality.

As she was running, she came across a woman who has hiding herself because she was giving birth to twins. This mother handed the babies to her and begged her to get them to safety...

I met one woman, she was incredibly gentle and kind, and told her story with a composure that’s hard to fathom. She was working on her land along with her husband and mother-in-law, a totally run-of-the-mill day. They were so engrossed with the task at hand, they didn’t notice that their village was being attacked by armed ‘Fulani’ militants (the majority of the violence being carried out in Northern Nigeria is at the hands of Islamic extremist groups such as Fulani militants, Boko Haram and ISWAP - Islamic State in West African Province). She looked up to find herself face-to-face with two attackers and despite their command for her to surrender to them, she ran, as did her husband and mother-in-law. While she was running, she could hear bullets flying past her head and the screams of her mother-in-law. Making it to a neighbouring village, she gathered help and eventually went back to find her husband and mother-in-law. Both of whom were stabbed and killed that day.

The Fulani militants now have control over her village, and she told us how she’s been praying that she would be able to forgive these men for what they’d done, as she is now forced to live alongside them. And so, she felt proud because she had recently been able to respond to one of the men as they greeted her.

There was another woman, she was strong and defiantly compassionate. Her story is laced with horror. She studied at a university – the discrimination she experienced there meant that a course that was supposed to be four years long, took her eight years to complete. In 2014, Boko Haram attacked the university – while she was trying to escape, her friend was shot and ‘hacked at’ while he refused to deny his Christian faith. She recalls how his last words were ‘I’m happy. I’ve saved lives today. And I have Jesus’.

He died and she continued to run. As she was running, she came across a woman who has hiding herself because she was giving birth to twins. This mother handed the babies to her and begged her to get them to safety, as she did so, she heard the mother being shot behind her.

She ran those twins to Cameroon, leaving them in safety, and now lives in a rural Nigerian village where she teaches the local children. Her Christian identity is no secret, and so faces continual danger. Her crops were burnt to the ground and destroyed, twice. And the villagers have tried, repeatedly, to get her to leave. One night, she came face to face with young men with bats and machetes who threatened her life – she told them – ‘you can’t scare me. I have seen the Lord’.

And they left. Remarkably, that village is still her home.

One heart-wrenchingly-young girl told us how, while she sleeping – she was awoken by her father who told her that they needed to run, they were under attack. She ran, hand in hand with her father, while her mother carried her younger brother. While they were fleeing, her dad was shot and killed. Her mother pried her hand out of her father’s and buried both her and her brother in sand, instructing them to stay hidden. The next day, they found that their house, their crops, their entire village had been burnt down.

This is what is happening. This is what we are not seeing.

While we are not seeing this violence, they are not seeing an end to it.

Since my return, I have met with a man who bears the physical scars of his trauma. He thought his house was being pillaged by armed robbers - it was only when they led him, his brother and his father outside, made them kneel with their hands tied behind their backs, and demanded that they denounce their Christian faith that he realised he was being attacked by Boko Haram. It was a regular evening, he was putting together a lesson plan for his class the following day, and now he was kneeling before an executioner. His father refused their demand, and they beheaded him. His brother also refused, and they took a blade to him, too. Then it was his turn, and while his mind was filled with thoughts of death and how much this was about to hurt, he also prayed that these men would be forgiven for what they were doing. Taking after Jesus, who forgave his executioners mid-execution, this man continued to pray as he felt the blade in his neck.

Left to bleed to death, miraculously, both him and his brother survived. Now, his scar tells an astonishing story.

This epidemic of violence seems to reside under our radar. It’s not quite catching our eye, is it? And, as a result, is not quite receiving the force of our outrage nor benefiting from the depths of our compassion. So many of the people that I met expressed a feeling of being neglected – like they’re suffering in deafening silence. While we are not seeing this violence, they are not seeing an end to it.

What’s happening in Nigeria is a crisis, one that we must acknowledge.

Article

Ambition

Comment

General Election 24

Politics

18 June 2024

5 min read

Is it really time to “go for the jugular”?

How to handle political enemies.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

A screen grab of a news paper report with a headline and picture. The headline reads: 'Go for Keir Starmer’s jugular to rescue campaign, Rishi Sunak urged'.

The Times' 16 June headline.

The Times.

As the election campaigns trundle down the hill to election day, poll trackers have shown little meaningful change for weeks. Amongst my friends and acquaintances, I can find barely anyone who is bothering to read the campaign coverage. No doubt, news editors are just as bored as we are with the same-old, same-old. Perhaps it is they who are leaning on commentators to spice up their language, saying things like it is time to “go for the jugular”. Are they straining for headlines by provoking candidates to stop waving manifestos and start lobbing personal attacks? (And did anyone stop to consider the irresponsibility of such language, following the awful, violent murders of MPs Jo Cox and David Amess?)

It is very uncomfortable to have enemies, which only makes it all the more astonishing that anyone ever goes into politics – professional enemy-making, if you will. And there is an incredible subtlety to the business. As a politician, one needs to be a convincing enemy to one’s enemy, but at the same time, a convincing friend to one’s enemy’s friends (in the hope that they might switch their allegiance). Then, if elected, one must serve a whole constituency, including many ‘enemies’ who didn’t actually vote for you, and probably never will. In such a complicated game of gregarious gymnastics, and with the ever worrying rise of violence and threats against MP’s, how on earth does a politician maintain any reasonable sense of safety and of self?

An enemy who has lost his temper is one of the few people that you can trust to tell you the truth about yourself.

Reflecting on this, I wonder whether the game of politics gives a fresh insight into those very famous words that Jesus once said: “Love your enemies.” This instruction has long baffled and inspired the great thinkers of this world. Why would Jesus say such a thing? Some focus on the way in which loving one’s enemies benefits the lover. Desmond Tutu, for example, said, “Love your enemy: it will ruin his reputation.” Or Mark Twain, somewhat more cynically, said, “Love your enemy: it will scare the hell out of them.” There are many others I could quote here, but the general theme is one of power. Loving empowers the lover to keep going in the face of hate, and it is surely the only way an MP can get through the day, serving so many people who didn’t actually vote for them.

But looking at those who speak of enemies, there is another general theme that can be identified, one which pre-dates Jesus’ command to love enemies, and one that is to do with the way in which they help to define us. The Greek Philosopher Antisthenes is reported to have said that an enemy who has lost his temper is one of the few people that you can trust to tell you the truth about yourself. As a thinker, Antisthenes was famously cynical, one who very much subscribed to a “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” kind of vibe, even welcoming ill-repute because it could help one to grow in virtue.

Given the popularity of Greek Philosophy in the first century, it is possible that many of Jesus’ listeners had Antisthenes pithy advice, or something like it, in the back of their minds when Jesus uttered his famous words. Of the many ways to understand “love your enemies”, some may have heard it as a reminder that enemies do us a kind of service. They help us to define ourselves, giving a profound (if somewhat uncomfortable) reflection of how we appear to others. Of course, enemies are biased. Like a distorted mirror, they over emphasise our bad propensities and overlook the good. But taken in the right spirit, this serves as a foil to our friends and acquaintances who may well distort the uncomfortable truth about ourselves in the opposite direction.

Perhaps it is no bad thing for our politicians to admit their mutual enmity – not in the sense of tearing each other down but in the sense of sharpening each other up...

As a young adult, I was given the advice not to fear enemies, but to divide them up into two categories: enemies in residence and enemies in exile. The exiled ones are the ones who are simply dangerous or nasty – the bullies, the gossips and those who may tend towards violence. To love these people is to pity them and to pray for them, but also to keep them far enough away so that they cannot do you harm. Enemies in residence, however, are the useful ones. These are the enemies that you keep just close enough so that you can hear what they have to say. They will scrutinise your words and your actions, they will cast doubt on your motivations, and they will scoff at your ambitions. All of this is both miserably uncomfortable and highly valuable, sowing just enough seeds of self-doubt that you check yourself, analyse yourself and strive to be the best that you can be.

Perhaps Antisthenes was on to something: when it comes to harsh critique from enemies, what doesn’t kill you does indeed make you stronger. And perhaps this is one of the ways to interpret Jesus’ words, “love your enemies” – in the sense of loving what they do for you in terms of personal growth. If this is the case, then perhaps it is no bad thing for our politicians to admit their mutual enmity – not in the sense of tearing each other down but in the sense of sharpening each other up, of spurring each other on to be the best, most clearly defined versions of themselves that they can be.

So, it is fine with me if there are enemies in politics: a person with enemies is a person who knows who they are and what they stand for. Enemies should, as Jesus advised, love each other enough to do the job properly and fairly – (this is no inlet for cowardly keyboard warriors). But even so, I didn’t care for the cheap, headline-grabbing phrase “go for the jugular” – it all sounds unnecessarily violent. As much as we and our politicians should love one another enough to be enemies, let us not love one other to death.