Nigeria (MNN) — How much longer? Christians in Nigeria suffer not only rampant killings by Fulani militants and Boko Haram, but also a struggling economy. In July the annual inflation rate was at a staggering 33%.
The government’s response to recent protests on these issues has not been encouraging. In August, hundreds of protesters were arrested and at least 20 were shot and killed. More recently on Nigeria’s Independence Day (October 1), protesters were again arrested. That same day, seven people were killed by Fulani herdsmen in a village in central Nigeria’s Benue State — in an area that had already seen three attacks in the previous month.
Benue State highlighted in red. (Image courtesy of Himalayan Explorer via Wikimedia Commons, based on work by Uwe Dedering CC BY-SA 3.0)
Gideon Para-Mallam is a Nigerian minister who started the Para-Mallam Peace Foundation. He is also a leadership development catalyst with the Lausanne Movement. He believes persecution in Nigeria is becoming an existential threat to Christianity in the nation.
Two of the challenges facing Nigerian Christians today are lack of collaboration and lack of resources.
“The discouragement is not even coming from the persecution, per se. The discouragement is coming more from leaders who need to get together to craft a response that’s biblical,” says Para-Mallam. “That’s not coming.”
This lack of a constructive, united response to the Islamic militant attacks has deeply frustrated younger Christians.
Displaced and in need
The other challenge Para-Mallam notes is that when believers are systematically uprooted from their ancestral homelands, it leads to lack of resources.
Nigerian children. (Photo courtesy of Victor Nnakwe/Unsplash)
“In the last decades, the [form of] persecution [is] sustained in the sense that they’re uprooting Christians from their ancestral farmlands, their homelands,” Para-Mallam says.
“When you begin to uproot [a] large population of Christians from their ancestral homelands, it’s not a joke. Their houses are burnt, their farms destroyed, and on top of that they have no place to go. It presents the huge challenge of humanitarian response, and when that [need] is not met, it can be very, very discouraging.”
Now that you know, would you commit to praying for Nigeria?
“Pray for Christians to respond biblically to this persecution. Listen to the story of what’s happening in some of these places, because if you don’t hear, you don’t know, you won’t know how to bring the needed support in terms of collaboration,” Para-Mallam says.
The Gideon and Funmi Para-Mallam Peace Foundation brings Muslims and Christians together to reflect on the important subject of peace. Learn more about their mission here.
“Our inspiration came from Matthew 5:9,” says Para-Mallam. “‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ — underscore makers, not peace builders, but makers — ‘for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God.’”
Header photo of 2020 protests in Abeokuta, Nigeria courtesy of Tope. A Asokere via Unsplash.
