Rhoda Ya’u Jatau, 45, has been held by the Bauchi State authorities since 20 May on allegations of blasphemy. For close to six months, her husband Ya’u Adamu has endured the pain of his wife's incarceration, writes Masara Kim.
CSI's Joel Veldkamp and Franklyne Ogbunwezeh interview Masara Kim, a courageous Christian journalist from Plateau State in #Nigeria, about the situation for Christians in his country, and the historical roots of the current persecution.
In an amenity ward of the Vom Christian hospital, four-month-old David Pam slept peacefully in a baby bed on the morning of 14 August, unaware of the fate that had befallen him.
Two weeks earlier, on 31 July, Islamic terrorists identified as members of the Fulani tribe attacked his village of Danda Chugwi, 15 miles southwest of Jos, and killed almost his entire family. His right arm was severed by the terrorists’ bullet in an attack that has been condemned as ‘callous’ by local officials.
On 21 June, 14 NGOs submitted a confidential petition about Nigeria to the UN Special Advisor for Genocide Prevention.
Five weeks later, the Office of the Secretary General still
NOTICE: This article contains disturbing photos and graphic descriptions of violence.
On 5 June 2022, scores of people were murdered by gunmen at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, deep in Nigeria's normally-peaceful Southwest.
Amaka Okoye visits the site of the Owo Pentecost Massacre, and speaks with victims, eyewitnesses and survivors of the attack. They recount the incident with vivid horror.
Just over a week after the brutal murder of a Christian college student in Sokoto, Muslim residents attacked Christians in Katanga, Bauchi state.
As in Deborah Samuel’s case, locals accused a female Christian health worker, Rhoda Ya’u, of blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed, following a comment she made in a government employee WhatsApp group. According to witnesses, the accusation prompted more than 200 teenagers, led by a few adults, to gather to attack Ya'u.
By Franklyne Ogbunwezeh
The persecution of Christians and the demographic displacement of minorities in the Middle Belt of Nigeria has taken on genocidal dimensions and is “a crime worse than that carried out in the town of Bucha in Ukraine”.
This was the observation of Professor Obiora Ike, a Geneva-based Nigerian human rights activist and executive director of the global ethics network Globethics.net, who is presently on a working visit to the Middle Belt of Nigeria.
On May 12, Deborah Yakubu, a Christian university student in Sokoto, Nigeria, was lynched after she was accused of blasphemy. The videos of her murder have shocked Nigeria.
Franklyne Ogbunwezeh, CSI's Senior Research Fellow for Africa, spoke with Joel Veldkamp about the murder, and what it means for the future of Christians in Nigeria.
A Nigerian Christian student was murdered on her university campus yesterday by a mob of Muslim students who accused her of blaspheming Islam.
Two videos posted online show the aftermath of the killing. In one, a half dozen men beat Deborah’s lifeless body with sticks while they shout “Allahu Akbar” (God is great). A second video shows her body burning while her killers boast about killing her.
By Masara Kim, reporting from Jos Thousands of Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region are currently homeless following a daylight attack by Muslim militants on 26 April, which killed at least 21 people. According to local sources, dozens of armed men in multiple groups stormed four farming towns on the boundaries of Kaduna and Plateau States at about 4pm local time, shooting and burning houses. Ezekiel Isa, a resident of one of the towns in southeastern Kauru Local Government Area of...