Church elder killed and three people abducted in Fulani attack on Nigerian village
Morning Star News reports that Fulani extremists in Nigeria shot and killed a church elder and abducted three other Christians in a recent attack in northwest Nigeria. Mati Sani, a sixty-five-year-old lay-leader of the Evangelical Church Winning All, was murdered at around 1 a.m. on the 16th of February during a terrorist attack carried out in the village of Kadabuki Dan-Marabu, Kankara County, Katsina State.
Ibrahim Lawal, Mamar Rahila and Hafsat Yusuf were all abducted. Meanwhile, Danjuma Sani Mati was transported to a hospital to receive treatment for gunshot wounds, the late pastor’s son, the Rev. Ali Mati, told Morning Star News. The nonprofit news outlet reports that all of the victims are Christian and related to each other.
Stephen Enada, the co-founder of the International Committee on Nigeria, a coalition focusing on religious freedom and human rights in Nigeria, told The Christian Post that Christian persecution in Nigeria is widespread and has “escalated” in all regions of the country. He contends that the terrorist and militant groups operating in the region are motivated by an agenda to Islamise the country.
“The rate of insecurity and terrorist and militant activity in Nigeria is unprecedented,” Enada stressed.
Since 2009, some 34,400 Nigerian Christians have been murdered by radical Islamists, with 2,200 slain last year, according to a report released in December by the Nigeria civil society group International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law. Radical Muslim extremists have also killed an estimated twenty thousand moderate Muslims.
Source: christianpost.com
Image: Chris Hondros/Getty Images
