Nigeria has been a religious, economic and political disaster for many years, which is why it took the kidnapping of some 300 boys on Dec. 11, supposedly by Islamic militants, to raise the outrage threshold about how unlivable the entire northern half of that country has become.
Then — miraculously — the boys were returned within a week. It’s not clear as to whether all the boys were returned or what happened to those who may have been killed during the kidnapping or a whole host of other questions. As always, there are so many questions and, in major media, so little coverage seeking answers.
Chief among the missing angles is the religious component (the religion “ghost” in GetReligion language). For instance, when 276 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014, we knew these were Islamic militants doing the job. What we weren’t told is that the Chibok girls were Christian, not Muslim (even though northern Nigeria is majority Muslim) and how that made a huge difference as to whether they’d be released or not.
To this day, more than 100 of those girls remain missing. Imagine if that was your teen-aged daughter.
Four years later, mostly Muslim girls were kidnapped from Dapchi , 170 miles northwest of Chibok, but later returned. The lone Christian girl among them, Leah Sharibu, was held back because she refused to convert to Islam. She has never been released and reportedly was forcibly “married” to a Boko Haram commander and delivered a baby boy earlier this year.
Thus, if the victims are Muslim, they stand a good chance of being returned. If they’re Christian, not so much.
The Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall unfortunately) gave this account about the return of the boys:
KATSINA, Nigeria—More than 300 Nigerian boys were reunited with their parents Friday, a week after militants stormed their dormitories in one of the largest kidnappings of schoolchildren in history.
There were emotional scenes at the Hajj camp in the city of Katsina as parents and their sons clutched in tearful embraces. The schoolboys, many of whom looked dazed and exhausted after six days in captivity, had spent hours being shuttled between press conferences with local politicians and President Muhammadu Buhari before seeing their families shortly after nightfall.
The governor of Katsina state, Aminu Bello Masari, said all 344 kidnapped boys had been freed after their six-day captivity, a claim several of those rescued confirmed.
The Journal added that other sources had said there were closer to 500 boys kidnapped and that a ransom had to have been paid out.
The boys’ relatively swift release was a much-needed win for the government of Mr. Buhari, for whom the kidnapping was an embarrassing reminder of the 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok. That attack ignited the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign, drawing the world’s attention to the rise of Boko Haram militants.
After three years, 103 of the girls were freed for a ransom that, according to people involved, included the exchange of five imprisoned militants and €3 million, equivalent to about $3.7 million. The government has denied paying a ransom for the Chibok girls.
BBC said the culprits weren’t Islamic terrorists at all:
A spokesman for Governor Masari, Abdul Labaran, told the BBC the boys had been held by bandits.
"It wasn't Boko Haram," he said. "The local bandits we know about all along were responsible. These are people we know very well, I met some of their leaders. That is why an umbrella body of cattle breeders' association was used in contacting them. So the negotiation was made through this umbrella body of cattle breeders."
However:
On Thursday, video was released bearing Boko Haram's emblem, showing dozens of boys, some of whom appeared to be very young.
One of the boys said they had been taken captive by "the gang of Abu Shekau". Abubakar Shekau leads Boko Haram, a group notorious for school kidnappings, including one in Chibok in 2014, when nearly 300 schoolgirls were seized.
The name of the group, which is based in north-east Nigeria, loosely translates as "Western education is forbidden".
Skekau’s cohort, by the way, took responsibility for killing 70 farmers earlier this month.
CNN’s report posited another possibility: That the kidnappers were bandits posing as Abubakar Shekau.
Sounds like we need the dust to settle before figuring out who did this. However, years of news at ground level has made it clear that most conflicts in Nigeria include religious motives and it’s dishonest for media to state otherwise.
Take, for instance, the Fulani tribesmen in central Nigeria who’ve been massacring Christian farmers further to the south. This nuanced BBC story doesn’t get around to mentioning the religious divides until one-third of the way through the story. And then the rest of the story makes it sound like both parties are equally to blame.
But according to GenocideWatch.com, it’s the Christians that are getting massacred. Listen to these statistics:
350 Nigerian Christians were massacred in the first two months of 2020. Over 11,500 Christians have been murdered since June 2015. Four to five million Christians are displaced. 2000 churches were destroyed.
Nigeria has become a killing field of defenseless Christians. Reliable sources show that between 11,500 and 12,000 Christians have been massacred since June 2015 when the Buhari Government of Nigeria came to power. These statistics are based on careful records kept by church groups that include the names of victims and dates of their murders.
Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen accounted for 7,400 murders of Christians. Boko Haram committed 4000 killings of Christians. ‘Highway Bandits’ who separated Christians from Muslims on buses and then killed the Christians committed over 200 murders.
Fulani Jihadists are now the world’s deadliest terrorist group. Five Nigerian Christians are massacred every day by Fulani and Boko Haram Jihadists.
So you wonder why so many Nigerians are desperate to get out of Dodge? The Wall Street Journal did a piece on this exact topic on Dec. 20 a year ago:
A slow-motion war is under way in Africa’s most populous country. It’s a massacre of Christians, massive in scale and horrific in brutality. And the world has hardly noticed.
The reporter, French journalist Bernard-Henri Levy, had the guts to go where most western journalists would never venture. He interviews survivors of massacres and details some of the horrors done to them, including one woman whose four children were killed before her eyes.
When her turn came and they noticed she was pregnant, a discussion ensued. Some didn’t want to see her belly slit, so they compromised by cutting up and amputating her left arm with a machete. She speaks quickly and emotionlessly, staring into space as if she lost her face along with her arm. The village chief, translating for her, chokes up. Tears stream down his cheeks when she finishes her account. …
The Anglican bishop of Jos, Benjamin Kwashi, has had his livestock stolen three times. During the third raid he was dragged into his room, a gun to his head. He dropped to his knees and prayed at the top of his voice until the thrumming of a helicopter drove his assailants off.
I know it’s difficult to get journalists in and out of these areas safely, but if an elderly French reporter can do it, so can other scribes. Sadly, as tmatt noted in a post earlier this year, it seems that these massacres aren’t a big enough story for the world media. Even Pope Francis (Catholics are getting killed as well) isn’t saying much these days.
Nigeria is a failed state and it’s time to stop pretending otherwise. Even Nigerian media area admitting as much. Thus, this Council for Foreign Relations opinion piece a year ago that suggested the problems were more than just Christians vs. Muslims and that Boko Haram goes after its co-religionists as well, is begging the point. Of course the terrorist group will go after the many other Muslims who disagree with their deadly tactics, especially when there are no Christians left to pick off.
For those hoping to prevent Nigeria from becoming another Rwanda, there are ways to induce coverage, such as demonstrations in front of Nigerian embassies or consulates or working to relax immigration laws to help persecuted Nigerians to emigrate here.
Of course, there has also been President Donald Trump, whose administration brought the Fulani conflict to the attention of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in the spring of 2018. Not that Buhari paid any attention because Trump didn’t attach any threats to make Nigeria get its act together. Forbes magazine said the Trump was right to raise concerns because Nigeria’s presence on the world stage is up there along with Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of terror within its borders.
Furthermore, the religious component cannot be neglected. Open Doors reported that between 2006 and 2014, 9,000 - 11,500 Christians were killed and over 13,000 churches destroyed in northern Nigeria. Those numbers are not insignificant and the effect of such targeted atrocities cannot be ignored. Indeed, the destruction of 13,000 churches is likely to have affected close to 1.3 million Christians in the region and do adversely affected their right to practice their religion as well as marginalised the group as a whole.
It’s actually in the Nigerian government’s self interest to stop the Islamic takeover of their country, which so far it has languidly failed to do. Do they really want their country to become another ISIS empire? Do its leaders really think that, after the Christians are eradicated, moderate Muslims won’t be next?
Reporters should treat Nigeria not as an up-and-coming petrol power but as the human rights disaster it already is. And stop pretending that Christians and Muslims are effective counterweights against each other or that all of these fights center on economics, cattle and real estate, alone. One side is getting driven out of much of the country. The other side is not. Report on that.
Note: The 2019 U.S. State Department report on International Religious Freedom regarding Nigeria also offers valuable statistics and insight.