Boko Haram (ISWAP) fighters in Nigeria. (Credit: bellanaija.com)
A string of attacks last week in the northeastern Nigerian province of Borno left over 140 people dead, mostly civilians, as the West African syndicate of ISIS (ISWAP, formerly known as Boko Haram) has begun a new offensive to capture territory in the war-torn province. The attacks began last Tuesday morning, when ISWAP militants raided the small town of Gubio and tricked civilian guards into surrendering peacefully. Once the town was disarmed and gathered together, the jihadists opened fire, summarily executing dozens of men women and children. Those who fled were chased down and run over by all-terrain vehicles, killing dozens more. The village was set ablaze, six local leaders were abducted and over 1400 head of cattle were stolen, leaving behind a scene that the regional governor described as “barbaric.”
Then yesterday, two companies of ISWAP militants drove into the cities of Monguno and Nganzai in simultaneous, coordinated attacks. The militants wandered the streets of Monguno, a center for the United Nations and foreign aid organizations, where they fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons indiscriminately. After several hours, at least 20 soldiers and several civilians lay dead. The jihadis also set fire to a UN building and police station, before the Nigerian army finally drove them from the city. A similar scene unfolded in Nganzai at the same hour, where fighters arrived in pickup trucks and opened fire on civilians, killing almost 40.
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The latest attacks underscored the growing danger for the people of Nigeria, where the the Boko Haram/ISWAP militants have been fighting an insurgency against the government for a decade. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country at 200 million. On the southwestern flank of the Muslim world, it is almost evenly split between 90 million Muslims in the north and roughly the same number of Christians in the south, which is the largest population for either religious group in any African nation. Boko Haram/ISWAP and allied Muslim herdsman have targeted Christians in deadly attacks in an attempt shape Nigeria into a Muslim-majority country. Over 5,600 Christians, have been murdered in raids and massacres similar to the one in Gubio, including over 600 so far this year. Hundreds have been enslaved, including the infamous kidnapping of the 276 Chibok girls from a Christian school in 2014, many of which are still missing. Tens of thousands of Christians more have been ethnically cleansed from Borno and other restive provinces in the north, becoming displaced people in southern Nigeria or surrounding nations like Cameroon, Niger and Chad, where the insurgency has followed them in recent years. So far, the governments of those four nations have been unable, or unwilling, to dismantle the insurgency.
We ask our global partners around the world to be in prayer for the people of Nigeria, that the Lord would use catastrophe, suffering an upheaval to create open doors for laborers into the harvest fields, that believers would be granted divine grace and strength to endure as sheep among wolves, that the eyes of jihadis would be opened to truth and they would be granted repentance, and that local governments would be granted success in restraining demonically-inspired violence and destruction.
Maranatha.
