Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe by The Catholic Star Newspaper via Facebook
CV NEWS FEED // A Nigerian bishop recently described the devastating reality that Islamist Fulani terrorists are committing a genocide against Christians, and called on the world to respond.
The genocide in Nigeria “should be the concern of every other human being, everybody, man and woman, of goodwill,” Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe of the diocese of Makurdi, in Benue State of Nigeria, told CatholicVote in an interview this week.
On December 23 and 24, Islamist Fulani herdsmen attacked and killed over 200 Christians while they were sleeping in local villages or returning from church services in the Central Plateau State of Nigeria.
This attack was one among many that have happened since at least 2015. Secular media outlets covering this conflict have claimed that the attacks are due to climate change and shrinking available land.
“That [claim] is not true,” Anagbe told CatholicVote, “because by all standards, climate change is not purely a Nigeria [problem]. It is a global issue. So I don’t know why, if climate change is happening also in Europe and America, I don’t know how many people in the U.S. are killed to solve climate issues.”
He stressed that people should not believe the climate change-focused “propaganda” of the conflict, and instead must “understand the real truth of the matter.”
“This is clearly a jihad,” Anagbe said, adding that “by extension, it is a genocide trying to wipe out indigenous communities, indigenous tribes, to enthrone Islam.”
“Human lives are being lost in Nigeria,” Anagbe said:
Just within the past 100 days, between November and the end of January, Nigeria has lost about 1000 lives to these heartless, mindless killers in the name of establishing an Islamic state of West Africa in Nigeria.
Anagbe described the killings as “ongoing. It has not stopped anywhere for over a decade now… And it is a continuous act every day. In Benue State… there is no day that passes that six, seven, ten people are killed in some villages.”
In late January, another attack killed 50 Christians in Mangu, Nigeria, where unidentified gunmen set fire to homes and open-fired on the villages. A prominent Christian leader lamented that the local Mangu government has not acted or responded to these attacks, a concern that Anagbe shared.
“The government has not done anything to apprehend anybody, arrest, or prosecute anybody,” Anagbe said. He recalled the Christmas Eve attacks and said that “up to now the government has not made any effort to track the perpetrators of this crime.”
Anagbe spoke before U.S. congressmen this week in Washington, D.C. His main message was to call on the United States to respond to the human rights abuses taking place in Nigeria before it is too late.
“We’re the people who are suffering also,” Anagbe told CatholicVote. “If we keep quiet, [it will be] just like when the world kept quiet during the genocide took place in Rwanda, which in less than a month, wiped out 800,000 people… and by the time we woke up, it was late.”
“It is good for [Congress] to know and take proactive action,” Anagbe said. Additionally, he stated that in light of the U.S. relationship with Nigeria, the U.S. should not “do business with a tyrannical government.”
Anagbe expressed gratitude to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) for helping make the voices of the Nigerian Christians heard in the world and for continued efforts to make the true narrative known.
Anagbe added that Christians in the West, especially in the United States, can help Nigeria “first and foremost [by praying] for God’s intervention in our country….”
“But also, when many of us Christians keep quiet, when we become so silent, then the evil men and women take the order of the day. And so we have to be proactive about what we defend,” Anagbe said:
Defend the faith which you have received from Christ. We are the legs of Christ, we are the hands of Christ, we are the mouth of Christ, so we should carry out the gospel to the ends of the world. The mother, the priest, every father, sister, bishop or cardinal, in your own office, in your own house, you can preach the gospel of Christ.
