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.

Review

Art

Character

Creed

Easter

Suffering

18 April 2025

5 min read

Why sculpt the face of Christ?

In Nic Fiddian Green’s work we feel pain, strength, fear and wisdom.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A man looks up a shaft of light that illuminates him and a crucifix higher up a wall.

I Accepted, 2025.

Richard Foster.

The seeds of faith were sown in the life of Nic Fiddian Green by his father. As he has explained recently, he “was shown a way and a faith, and an understanding around the faith of Christianity, in the way my father lived”.

Later, his wife-to-be, Henrietta Hutley, asked him to help create Stations of the Cross for the Wintershall Estate in Surrey where, today, The Nativity and the Life of Christ are regularly performed. Henrietta’s father, Peter, wrote and brought The Passion of Jesus to Trafalgar Square, while her mother, Anne, had the vision for the Stations of the Cross project after a life-changing visit to Medjugorje.

Fiddian Green says that “The Face of Christ has been with me for over 40 years” and that he has “searched for His face through my art as part of my spiritual journey, and also in the work of many others – especially Renaissance artists like Giotto, Piero della Francesca and Michelangelo”.

Fiddian Green, who is internationally celebrated for his monumental equine sculptures, has created a deeply personal and spiritually resonant exhibition entitled The Face of Christ. The exhibition features 20 new sculptures including works in bronze, copper, lead, marble, plaster, and silver, together with a series of drawings. The exhibition ranges from the Nativity to the Resurrection but focuses primarily on the crucifixion.

The exhibition is deeply personal for Fiddian Green because it is informed by the harrowing encounters he had with an array of life-threatening illnesses a few years ago. These caused an obvious and honest creative re-assessment and it is from these experiences that a stronger, deeper and more contemplative vision has emerged. One that permeates the new work via modes of stillness and reflection.

The Face of Christ offers a profoundly meditative engagement with the image of Christ, capturing a sense of serenity, resilience, and transcendence in bronze and stone. In these works, he shows us how his spirit and his faith help him triumph over the physical as he explores the enduring power of faith, suffering and redemption. In the eyes of his work, we feel pain, strength, fear, wisdom and more as he asks questions of the viewer that leave a powerful and spiritual resonance.

Fiddian Green says: “These works are a reflection of my journey of faith. I have come to find that His power to elevate us underpins everything I strive to do and The Face of Christ is an attempt for me to convey in my work all that He conveys in my heart. Christ gives me the key, but will I open the door…?”

A sketch shows the hanging head of Christ wearing a crown of thorns.

This Storm Will Pass, 2024. Slademore Gallery.

A crucifix hands on a round-topped slab.

I Paid, 1993. Slademore Gallery.

Crown of Thorns, 2025. Nic Fiddian Green.

While the exhibition focuses on the crucifixion and the face of the crucified Christ, the expression on Christ’s face is generally one of peace, rather than pain. In part, this is because many of the heads of Christ included are images of Christ resting in death prior to the resurrection. The brokenness that the crucifixion brought is shown in these images through damage to the body of Christ, as opposed to the expressions on his face. This is most powerfully the case with ‘Broken for You’, a bronze crucifixion sculpture where Christ’s torso, as well as being scarred by a long spear-like fissure, has also been fractured with the two parts fused together using brace brackets. Similar fissures appear on other of the crucifixion sculptures but ‘Broken for You’ goes furthest in graphically showing the pain Christ endured on our behalf.

It seems to me that Fiddian Green could go further in revealing the horrors that Christ endured and that his love of Renaissance art with its focus on beauty and balance might hold him back in this regard. Another artist to have regularly depicted the Crucifixion in images shown in mainstream galleries in recent years is Peter Howson, whose images of the crucifixion are much more expressionist graphically capturing the depth of pain that Christ endured. Fiddian Green’s drawings, more than his sculptures, tap into the sense of pain endured, particularly ‘This Storm will Pass’, a partial image of the face of the crucified Christ which in its frenetic pencil-marks and incomplete state speaks particularly powerfully.

Fiddian Green, by contrast, primarily gives us a sense of the peace that he receives from Christ on the face of Christ. ‘I Forgive’, a bronze head of the crucified Christ depicts the love with which Christ looks on us as he endures the cross. ‘Christ is Laid to Rest’ is a huge head encircled by a crown of massive spikey thorns with green verdigris overtones suggesting the sweat and blood of anguish which has led to the completion of purpose that Christ finds in death. ‘Peace’, a plaster sculpture of Christ’s head, is also redolent of the supreme achievement of the cross; ‘It is finished’, meaning that all his work is complete and done, enabling him to rest and enabling us to enter rest.

In these images, Fiddian Green is reading back into the events of the crucifixion the outcomes that it gains for us and showing, in his Christ figures, the peace that he personally finds in the love and forgiveness which overflows from the crucified Christ to each and every human being throughout time and history.

Fiddian Green writes of having “been given materials to use by the God of heaven and earth” – those materials of the earth that he uses in his sculptures – and says that “it is my hope that some of these pieces may rest and resonate with those who see it; that they may find a deep connection by gazing on the works which takes the eye, the heart and the soul to the One who helped me create them”.

While Lent, Holy Week and Easter are often times when art is offered to enable us to walk in the footsteps of Christ it is not common for commercial galleries to specifically invite meditation on these events, so don’t miss the opportunity for contemplation that the Sladmore Gallery is providing through this exhibition.

The Face of Christ, 10th April – 2nd May 2025, Sladmore Gallery, London.

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