Protests Over Death of Nigerian Christian Man Lead to More Reprisals by Muslim Fulani Herdsmen
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Another spate of violence against Christians by Muslim Fulani Herdsmen occurred in Nigeria’s Plateau State last week, following the discovery of a Christian man’s body that led to protests by Christians against repeated Muslim aggression.
Enoch Monday’s motionless body was discovered by Plateau State Police Command on May 26th and transported to a nearby hospital, where he was declared dead. Witnesses reported that Monday had been returning from a service at the local Evangelical Church Winning All, one of the largest and fastest-growing denominations in Nigeria.
The protests that followed in the wake of his death tested the fragile boundaries between Christian and Muslim communities in the area and led to as few as 5 and as many as 30 additional Christian deaths, according to a local source, as well as the burning of 20 homes and the arrest of 30 Christian women fruit vendors, with Herdsmen militias the main perpetrators of the reprisals.
Rev. Luke Shehu, head of a local Christian organization who called the violence “sacrilege unimaginable to be carried out in the month of Ramadan,” said that some of the perpetrators were even dressed in military garb.
Some have speculated whether Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s President, who is descended from the ancestral Fulani tribe of which the herdsmen militias are a part, is not lending tacit support to the anti-Christian violence through his inaction.
“Nigeria’s score for violence has stayed as high as possible, primarily due to the increased attacks on Christian communities by Hausa-Fulani Islamic militant herdsmen,” Open Doors USA said in a recent report. By some estimates, Fulani violence against Christians in Nigeria has even outstripped that of Boko Haram, the West African brand of ISIS.
The same Plateau State was the locus of a famously heinous slew of killings by Muslim herdsmen militias that the Nigerian House of Representatives declared “genocide” in July 2018.
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