Nigeria: A Hell-Hole For Christians!

By Femi Fani-Kayode

“We will defeat radical Islamic terrorism and we will not allow it to take root in our country…we will wipe it off the face of the earth.”            

– President Donald J. Trump.

Now that is a real President talking! Sadly our ailing Head of State does not possess such a mindset and neither does he share such a disposition. Unlike Trump he does not have an aversion to such evil.

Consequently he has refused to apprehend, caution, arrest or prosecute even one member of the radical Islamist Fulani supremacists and terrorists since he came to power just less than two years ago even though they have butchered thousands of innocent Christians, burnt their homes and occupied their land.

A few days ago, in a letter inviting President Goodluck Jonathan to make a presentation about the plight of Christians in Nigeria, the Chairman of the United States Congress’s Sub-Committee on Africa, Global Health, Human Rights and International Organisations, Congressman Christopher Smith, wrote the following: “my subcommittee has broadly investigated the crises facing Christians in Nigeria today. My staff director, Greg Simpkins and I have made several visits to Nigeria, speaking with Christians and Muslim religious leaders across the country and visiting fire-bombed churches, such as in Jos. Unfortunately, Nigeria has been cited as the most dangerous place for Christians in the world and impunity for those responsible for the killing of Christians seem to be widespread.”

When one considers the sheer horror that the Christians of northern Nigeria have been subjected to over the last 56 years can anyone dispute Smith’s assertion? Yet it did not stop there. Mr. Douglas Murray, an influential and respected columnist in the United Kingdom’s Spectator Newspaper painted a graphic picture of what has become the norm in northern Nigeria rather well. Last week, in a widely read essay titled ‘Who Will Protect Nigeria’s Northern Christians’ he wrote as follows: “A few days before any attack, a military helicopter is spotted dropping arms and other supplies into the areas inhabited by the Fulani tribes. Then the attack comes. For reasons of Islamic doctrine, the militia often deliver a letter of warning. Then they come, at any time of night or day, not down the dirt tracks, but silently through the foliage. The Christian villagers, who are forbidden to carry arms (everyone is, in theory), have no way to defend themselves. With some exceptions, they also tend to believe what they were taught about turning the other cheek”.

With contributions and interventions like this from our friends in the international community it appears that the world is finally waking up and recognising the fact that northern Nigeria is in the grip of a great, blood-craving and blood-lusting evil. The frightful events that took place in Southern Kaduna over the Christmas holidays are still fresh in our minds and neither will we EVER forget them.

Yet sadly the carnage did not stop there. It continues on a regular and systematic basis. For example 40 more Christians were killed and many of their houses were burnt to the ground by Islamist Fulani militias on February 1st in a town called Mummuye in the Lau Local Government Area of Taraba state. Little girls were raped and chopped up like barbecue spare ribs. Young boys were sodomised and beheaded. Grown men were castrated and hacked to pieces. Old men were gutted and sliced up like spring onions. And women, both young and old, were slowly tortured and violently violated in the presence of their husbands, children and grandchildren after which their throats were slit open and their blood drained into fly-infested gutters and the dark night soil.

This is the work of heartless vampires and demons in human flesh. This is carnage and butchery in its rawest and most primitive form. This is a festival of horror and a frightful testimony of man’s inhumanity to man. This is evil. This is unacceptable. This is barbaric. This is condemnable. And whether anyone likes to admit it or not, this is Nigeria today. The only thing left to say is to pray that the souls of those that were slaughtered in cold blood rest in peace. The Holy Bible says “fear not those that can kill the body but fear the one that can throw the soul into hell”.

The Fulani jihadists and Janjaweed militias may be able to kill our bodies and take away all that is dear to us but, because we are believers and we are rooted in Christ, they cannot take our precious and eternal souls. The Holy Bible says “He who watches over Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers”. It says “many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers him of them all”. These words bring life. They stir the spirit and they re-ignite soul. They are our strength, our hope and our salvation. They are the only redeeming factor in this entire ugly episode and unholy mess. They are the consolation that we have whilst the evil and the horror of Christian genocide and mass murder continuous to ravage and afflict our beleaguered people and plague our blood-soaked land.

The truth is that I speak for millions when I say that we have had enough. And let me take this opportunity to let those that care to know, friend and foe alike, precisely what my mindset is and how this mindless slaughter and ethnic and religious genocide has shaped my thinking. My politics and views are unapologetically right wing. They have always been and they always will be. I am proud to say that I belong to the far right when it comes to the political spectrum. I am an evangelical Christian and I am an ethnic nationalist. I believe in the right of the Yoruba people of south-western Nigeria to have Oduduwa Republic if that is their wish. I believe in the right of the Igbo people of south-eastern Nigeria to have Biafra if that is their wish. And I believe in the right of every ethnic nationality to exercise their right of self-determination if that is their wish.

I believe that anything less than that is an assault on their freedom and an eloquent testimony to servitude and slavery. I believe that the sheer volume of innocent blood that has been spilled and shed on Nigerian soil has made the nation, as it is presently constituted, irredeemable and repugnant to God. It must be rededicated to the Lord and restructured and, failing that, it must be broken into two or more pieces. When it comes to the international plain I support the strong men and women of our day: the visionaries and the nationalists who, I believe, put the interests of THEIR countries first before anything else.

For example I love President Donald Trump of the United States of America and I admire President Vladimer Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel. I agree with most of their views and I support most of their right wing nationalist policies. I am also thrilled at the fact that they are all men of passion and conviction and that they are all men of strong faith. That is very important to me and I have a similar disposition. I respect Mr. Nigel Farage MEP of the United Kingdom’s UKIP, Madame Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front, Mr. Geert Wilders of Holland’s Freedom Party and virtually every other right wing European politician and leader. I believe that they are saying and doing what is best for their respective countries and people and I am constrained to say and do what is best for mine.

Like them I believe that the greatest threat to humanity, the nation-state, the freedoms that we cherish and world peace today is the rising power of radical Islam and Islamist terror. In the Nigerian context I believe that the greatest threat to the peaceful co-existence of our people today is the barbarity of the Islamic fundamentalists that are in our midst and the evil and sheer wickedness of the genocidal maniacs and murderous barbarians that are known as the Fulani militias and herdsmen. Any person that places the value of a cow higher than the life of a human being is not fit to be described as human. And that is the demonic disposition of those herdsmen that kill innocent men and women at the drop of a hat and that I have come to despise.

They prey on the defenceless, the weak and the vulnerable and they drink and bathe in the blood of innocents and infants. I despise the concept of a hybrid mongrel state where integration with ethnic and religious incompatibles is the norm and where I am expected to sacrifice my ethnicity and religious beliefs and faith on the altar of an artificial, iniquitous and cruel man-made mega-nation. Given what the Christian community in northern Nigeria has been subjected to for the last one year and seven months, I despise and have nothing but contempt for that concept and I pray every day for the restructuring or redefinition of Nigeria. This is because, in my view, the rest of us have nothing in common with the core northern Fulani herdsmen and militias and their friends and sponsors in high places. We come from a different world and espouse a different tradition. Keeping us together in one nation is like putting two big lions together in a small cage. One may be dominant for a while but when the second one comes of age and has had enough, all hell will break loose and they will fight to the death. At the end of that struggle only one of them will be left standing. That is where we have got to in Nigeria today.

It is time to open the cage and let us go before we kill each other. A so-called nation where 808 people are killed by Islamist Fulani militias on Christmas eve and Christmas day in Southern Kaduna simply because they are non-Fulanis and they are Christians is not a nation: it is an abattoir. To the Fulani militants the Christians of Nigeria are not human beings: they are nothing but sallah rams and Christmas turkeys fit only for the slaughter. It is instructive to note that President Goodluck Jonathan is the only former President of Nigeria that has had the courage to speak out against the killing of Christians in the north. He analysed the matter in a comprehensive and extensive manner and he proffered solutions to the problem in a presentation to the United States House Sub-Committee on Africa, in Washington D.C. on February 1st 2017.

 He said, inter alia, “Your invitation letter profusely highlighted the issues of the killing of Christians in Nigeria, the last major incident being the recent killings in Southern Kaduna in Kaduna state. The challenge is how do we stop that from recurring? How do we ensure that Christians and Muslims cohabit peacefully in Nigeria and practice their religions freely without discrimination, molestation and killings? One school of thought believes that these killings re-occur because of impunity. Security and law enforcement bodies unfortunately have a history of failing to apprehend the culprits of previous killings and disturbances and punishing them according to the law. Such impunity has emboldened and encouraged persons with such tendencies…

“If, as a nation, we do not kill religious persecution and extremism, then religious persecution and extremism will kill Nigeria. The potential danger associated with the level of conflicts going on across the country is so glaring that no sane mind can ignore it…The Boko Haram Islamic terrorist sect has been classified as the most deadly terror group in the world by the Global Terrorism Index. Herdsmen operating in and around Nigeria are listed as the fourth most deadly terror group… My belief is that the day the U.S. government and the Russian government decide to work together, that will surely mark the beginning of the end of global terror”.

President Jonathan’s intervention and counsel is gratifying and it gives us hope. I commend him for his courage. As for the other so-called leaders, including former Heads of States and Presidents, that have refused to condemn, show concern or proffer solutions to the nefarious and abominable activities of the Fulani militias and the religious genocide that is taking place in the north, one thing remains clear: the blood of those that were slaughtered is on their hands as much as it is on the hands of those that are doing the killing.

Why? Because they have joined hands with President Buhari and others and decided to turn a blind eye to what is fast turning into the greatest and most comprehensive catalogue of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and mass murder in African history. I wonder how they can sleep well at night? God is watching!

*Femi Fani-Kayode is a former Nigerian Minister of Aviation