Islamic Extremists Kill Nigerian Pastor, Attack His Hometown

LAGOS, Nigeria — Islamic militants in Nigeria have killed a Christian pastor who had pleaded for his life in a video just days earlier, and a human rights activist said Tuesday that other extremists attacked his hometown on the same day.

The Rev. Lawan Andimi was abducted earlier this month when Boko Haram militants attacked the Michika local government area, where he was the chairman of a local chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria. He was killed on Monday.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari condemned Andimi's slaying, calling it “cruel, inhuman and deliberately provocative.”

“I am greatly saddened by the fact that the terrorists went on to kill him even while giving signals of a willingness to set him free by releasing him to third parties,” Buhari tweeted.

Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International in Nigeria, called it “appalling” that Boko Haram followed up Andimi's killing on Monday with an attack on his hometown in the Chibok local government area of northeastern Borno state.

In April 2014, 276 girls were abducted from the Government Secondary School in Chibok. More than 100 are still missing nearly six years later.

Andimi is the latest Christian to be killed by Boko Haram or a breakaway faction that has ties to the Islamic State group.

On Friday, the Islamic State's West Africa Province, known as ISWAP, released a video which showed a hooded child with pistol in hand execute a Christian man. On Christmas Day, ISWAP killed nine Christians along with two other captives.

Boko Haram and ISWAP want to enforce strict Islamic law in Nigeria and have reportedly forced some captives to convert to Islam under threat of death. Nigeria’s Christian community is calling on the government to do more to protect them.

Comments

China Forces School Teachers to Renounce Christian Faith or Risk Being Fired

Chinese schools are requiring Christian teachers within the nation’s school system to renounce their faith or risk being fired, according to a new report by a religious liberty watchdog. Bitter Winter, which monitors religious freedom in the country, said the pressure on Christian teachers intensified after Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2018 said one goal of education was to raise the next generation of socialists. The speech was reported by state-run media. “The state’s control over ideology is becoming stricter and stricter, particularly in the field of education,” a Catholic kindergarten teacher told Bitter Winter . “If teachers hold religious beliefs … this becomes a political problem for the government.” The teacher told Bitter Winter she has received criticism for her faith in staff meetings. Additionally, the school principal warned her that a “spiritual civilization award” worth several million yuan that was given to the county ...

American Pastor Returns Home after Being Falsely Imprisoned for 7 Months in India

An American pastor is now back home with his family after being imprisoned in India for over seven months on false charges. Bryan Nerren, a pastor from Shelbyville, Tennessee, traveled overseas last October to attend conferences in India and Nepal for 2 weeks. Nerren, who is at the helm of an international non-profit ministry called Asian Children’s Education Fellowship, has been training Sunday school teachers in India and Nepal for the last 17 years. According to The American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ), a Christian advocacy non-profit law group which has been representing Nerren, noted that the pastor was detained and arrested upon his arrival at the airport in Bagdogra, India for allegedly “evading a duty on funds.” Nerren was carrying a sum of money that he intended to use to cover the expenses of his trip and the conference, but according to the ACLJ, the sum was not enough to make transporting it a crime. The law group reports that Nerren had ...

Mobs in India Threaten 16 Christian Families Every Night for Nearly Three Weeks

Tribal mobs armed with clubs went to the homes of 16 families of a church in Jharkhand state, India every night for nearly three weeks, threatening to kill them if they didn’t return to their animistic Sarna religion, a pastor said. “The persecutors were going with batons and wooden sticks, not giving the Christians any chance to say no, but emphasising that either they reconvert to the Sarna fold or they would kill them right then and there,” Pastor Sarabjit Bharati of Kirpa Bhavan Salom Church, outside Banjari Patan village in Palamu District, told Morning Star News. “They went to the extent of saying, ‘If these Christians do not accede, leave Christianity and return to our Sarna fold, we will kill them and consequently go to jail for it. We do not mind.’” Of 16 church families (about 130 people) threatened in one area, Pastor Bharati said two families were terrorized into returning to their ancestral Sarna religion, which involves worship of a creator god called Dharmes and a...

The Christian Voices

Search This Blog