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.

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Comment

General Election 24

Politics

18 June 2024

5 min read

The tale of two Hindu Prime Ministers

June 4th told a brief but bold story of Modi’s India. July 4th will reveal the mind of the UK.

Rahil Patel

Rahil is a former Hindu monk, and author of Found By Love. He is a Tutor and Speaker at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

official surround an open case containing an electronic voting terminal and cables.

Indian election officials unpack a voting machine.

@BruceDGilley on X.

After 44 days of voting across India, 640 million people entered 5.5 million election booths to choose who would be their next Prime Minister.

Finally, on June 4th the result was announced, and India had chosen the devout Hindu incumbent PM Narendra Modi.

But wait for the twist! Mr Modi announced way ahead of the elections that his ruling BJP party would win a significant majority of 400 seats out of the 543 in the Lower House. Many of the pollsters felt this was possible, among them Axis My India, the country’s most prominent polling company. Data-driven pollsters and an action-filled mass-media told the world that Mr Modi would have his thumping majority for a third consecutive term. Bafflingly not…

When the results were counted on June 4th it turned out that Mr Modi’s BJP managed a disappointing 292 seats, dropping it short of the majority needed to continue the status quo of Indian governance.

Pradeep Gupta, Founder and CEO of Axis My India, wept in front of media cameras, revealing to the hundreds of millions of voters that even after accurately predicting so many national and state elections, he can also get things terribly wrong.

The world media was largely shocked but couldn’t hide its glee. The Economist told readers on its front cover that Modi’s ethno-nationalist shortfall was a “triumph for democracy.” The Financial Times told its readers that Modi was “weakened”, and other headlines across the globe revealed that even the “most popular world leader” can be humbled.

Even though it was startling to most of those who kept an eye on this mammoth undertaking of democracy I was strikingly surprised to notice that no one claimed that the election was “rigged” or that there was “Russian interference” (or Chinese in the case of India)! It was simply accepted…alliances were struck and, within a day, 1.4 billion people in India moved ahead with Mr. Modi still as its PM, now heading the National Democratic Alliance parliamentary grouping. The smoothness of the political system after such a seismic surprise is quite astonishing to a “westerner” like me. In our “sophisticated” part of the world we seem to be confused as to who has won an election or even a referendum for that matter.

“Democracy” to many millions in India simply means, “elections” and in some towns and cities people queued for six hours to vote.

Mr Modi lost in the city of Ayodhya! This is where he consecrated the controversial Hindu temple on top of the ruins of a sixteenth century mosque that Hindu nationalists demolished in 1990. A disapproval by the people of the Hindu hub of Ayodhya is like saying that the Taliban have now decided to wave the rainbow flag… or that the state of Texas is now officially going full on vegan.

It’s interesting that no politician or media outlet echoed the chants and mantras of western elections or referendums in recent years and roared, “the people don’t know what they’ve voted for…so let’s do the vote again!” Quite strange for a nation whose GDP per capita is only $2,300…

350 million people in India live below the poverty line and I would go as far as to argue that 450 million of its inhabitants do not even know what the United Nations is let alone what it stands for. “Democracy” to many millions in India simply means, “elections” and in some towns and cities people queued for six hours to vote. Human Rights, Freedom of Expression or Religion are alien ideas when all you need is a meal.

It is humbling not just for Narendra Modi as the mass media have said in the west but even for keen observers here such as myself. That’s the first lesson.

The second lesson from this stunning outcome is to never ignore the people you think you can easily ignore…

It was the poor (even Hindus) whose homes were blatantly demolished to build the Hindu Temple in Ayodhya that went against Mr Modi. It was the farmers who protested for months for their financial security that decided that their leader is not really a man of the commoner but of the corporates. At least that’s the image Mr Modi gave them. About 55 per cent of India’s population receives an income related to the agriculture industry.

Finally, the Dalit (lowest caste) community didn’t vote the way the BJP expected. Even though their PM is from the lower Ghanchi caste they didn’t see in him any action suggesting that he is one of them.

At the beginning of his decade of rule Mr Modi cunningly utilised the fact that he is from a low caste background, a simple tea-selling family and not educated at Oxford or Stanford. And it worked.

But now the very people he cast a net over are beginning to peer through his fickle facade. “The axe convinced the trees in the forest that because its handle was made of wood it was one of them” is a Turkish proverb that comes to mind. Eventually, the trees catch on. When you fool people time and again, eventually they get the antibodies.

UK Prime Minister Sunak is also a devout Hindu who often uses the Hindu term dharma when he talks about ‘duty to his nation.’ And yet he is quite the opposite on many other accounts. Sunak is from a very educated and wealthy background. He went to Winchester School and then on to Oxford and ran a hedge fund before entering politics. He is liked by many world leaders and admired by HM Treasury, the government department he used to run. A ‘technocrat’ in every sense of the word and yet he is facing the same doubts and demands from the electorate – about integrity. I do not wish to isolate PM Sunak on the integrity chart but leaders and those with tall responsibilities attract a higher demand. Wisdom in the Christian Bible says, “to whom much is given, much will be required.”

June 4th told a brief and bold story of PM Narendra Modi’s India. July 4th will reveal the mind of the United Kingdom. How will we treat the people or politicians we disagree with? Dutch theologian and professor Benno Van Den Toren once told me that the minute you laugh at an idea you disagree with, is the exact moment you lose access to understanding what the individual or idea is trying to say. Will we seek to understand? Or simply win? The ruling class in India won for a decade whilst ignoring their opponents and as a result eventually lost their majority. As important as the result on July 4th in the UK is what happens after, how we steer our hearts and treat those who didn't vote as we did.

That is the humbling lesson to learn from the 640 million voters of India.