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Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, Nigeria, said Fulani Islamists come from “the deepest pit of hell,” following the massacre of more than 200 Christians over the Christmas holidays.
The perpetrators of these atrocities “are children of darkness, sons of Satan,” Bishop Kukah declared in a powerfully worded statement. “They opted to extinguish and snatch the light of the joy of Christmas from thousands of people on the Plateau.”
They imagined they would ignite “an orgy of blood” and so seduce the peace-loving people of the Plateau to undertake the “mindless murder of fellow citizens in the name of retaliation,” he said.
As Breitbart News reported, Fulani Muslims carried out a week of targeted attacks on Christians over Christmas in at least 26 villages in Plateau State in central Nigeria, beginning on December 23.
“The unprovoked attacks were well-coordinated and deliberate, specifically targeting Christian communities,” said Father Andrew Dewan, communications director for the Pankshin Diocese, where the killings took place.
“I can confirm that the victims are 100 percent Christian,” said the priest, adding that “not one Fulani was affected and no Fulani houses were burned.”
“For those who believe that this conflict is not religious, this latest attack proves that it is clearly a religious conflict,” Dewan said.
“The fact that it took place at Christmas, and the deliberate targeting of Christians in a mixed community where Muslims are not attacked, clearly bears all the hallmarks of a religious conflict,” he added.
This image grab from an AFPTV video taken in Maiyanga village, in Bokkos local government, on December 27, 2023, shows Christian families burying in a mass grave their relatives killed in deadly attacks conducted by armed groups in Nigeria’s central Plateau State. (Kim Masara/AFPTV/AFP via Getty)
In his declaration this week, Bishop Kukah warned that the slaughter constitutes a veritable war on the nation of Nigeria.
“These killings are just a preface,” the bishop said. “These killings are no longer acts by herders and farmers over grazing fields. No, there is more and we as a nation will do well to face this threat before it is sunset.”
“No evil lasts forever,” he continued. “The world defeated Slavery, Apartheid, Nazism, Racism, and forms of extremism.”
“We may pretend that we are not at war, but truly, a war is being waged against the Nigerian state and its people,” he said.
According to a report released last January by the Christian persecution watchdog group Open Doors, Christians in Nigeria “suffer persecution from an ingrained agenda of enforced Islamization, which is particularly prevalent in the north of the country and has gradually been spreading south.”
“Attacks by Islamic militant groups have increased consistently since 2015, but the government has failed to prevent the rise in violence, which affects all Nigerians, but particularly Christians,” it said.
In 2022, more Christians were killed for their faith in Nigeria than in any other country in the world and Nigeria also led the world in the number of Christians abducted, sexually assaulted, forcibly married or physically or mentally abused, the report revealed.
Two months ago, International Christian Concern (ICC) released a separate report, noting that Nigeria is currently the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian.
In ICC’s 2023 “Persecutors of the World” report, Nigeria is billed as the world’s top oppressor because of its “endemic” anti-Christian violence.
Radical Muslim terror groups such as Boko Haram and Fulani militants have waged a “20-year genocide against Christians in Nigeria,” the report declared, and as a result “Christian men, women, and children are brutally kidnapped, tortured, and killed every week in Nigeria.”
“Once again, Nigeria’s Christian community is suffering at the hands of radical Fulani militants,” ICC president Jeff King noted. “And once again, rather than intervening, the Nigerian government continues to turn a blind eye to the violence, aiding and abetting the ongoing genocide.”
Thomas D. Williams is Breitbart Rome Bureau Chief and the author of The Coming Christian Persecution.
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