Nigeria: Christian woman murdered while cleaning her church

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The slaughter of Christians in Nigeria’s Plateau state by suspected Fulani Islamic extremists continues unabated, and on August 27, a Christian woman was shot in the head and killed as she cleaned her church building, Morning Star News (MSN) reports.

Lyop Dalyop was murdered while cleaning the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) building in Bangai village, Riyom County, MSN reports.
“The incident occurred at about 8:05 p.m., shortly after she had gone to sweep the COCIN Church, Bangai, in preparation for Sunday morning worship service,” Dalyop Solomon Mwantiri, director of the Emancipation Centre for Crisis Victims in Nigeria, told Morning Star News in a text message. “The armed Fulani men shot her in the head.”

While Christians in Nigeria are hunted down and killed by Islamic jihadists of various groups, including Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen have become a prime source of terror for believers in the country. Belonging to hundreds of different clans with many languages, the predominantly Muslim Fulani are generally a peaceful people who do not hold extremist views.

However, groups of Fulani herdsmen have become radicalized and are intent on jihad against Christians. “They adopt a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP [Islamic State West Africa Province] and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG) said in a recent report.

Nigeria ranked number one in the world last year for the number of Christians killed on account of their faith: 43,000 Christians were murdered by Islamic militants between 2009-2021.

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