THE article below was written by DOUGLAS MURRAY, Associate Director of neoconservative British think tank, the Henry Jackson Society. A slightly longer version of it appeared in The Spectator, a UK magazine, in February. It contains extremely serious allegations. Nigerian authorities need to respond.Another day in Northern Nigeria, another Christian village reeling from an attack by the Muslim Fulani herdsmen who used to be their neighbours – and who are now cleansing them from the area. The locals daren’t collect the freshest bodies. Some who tried earlier have already been killed, spotted by the waiting militia and hacked down or shot. The Fulani are watching everything closely from the surrounding mountains. Every week, their progress across the Northern states of Plateau and Kaduna continues.Every week, more massacres – another village burned, its church razed, its inhabitants slaughtered, raped or chased away. A young woman, whose husband and two children have just been killed in front of her, tells me blankly, ‘Our parents told us about these people. But we lived in relative peace and we forgot what they said.’For the outside world, what is happening to the Christians of Northern Nigeria is both beyond our imagination andbeneath our interest. These tribal-led villages, each with their own ‘paramount ruler’, were converted by missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries. But now theseChristians…sense that they have become unsympathetic figures, perhaps even an embarrassment, to the West. The international community pretends that this situation is a tit-for-tat problem, rather thana one-sided slaughter.Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the press fails to report or actively obscures the situation. Christians in the south of the country feel little solidarity with their co-religionists suffering from this Islamic revivalism and territorial conquest in the north. And worst of all, the plight of these people is of no interest to their own government. In fact, this ethnic and religious cleansing appearsto be taking place with that government’s complicity or connivance. Every village hasa similar story. 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……The village of Goska was attacked on Christmas Eve. In a temporary shelter nearby, a young man describes how he rantowards his home when he heard the attack start. There he found his mother lying dead on the floor. Uniformed Fulani militia were everywhere. He fled across the fields……Across the surviving Christian villages of the north, thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced……Villages have been persuaded to keep records of the attacks to show anyone whocares. One of the very few from outside who does – Britain’s own Baroness Cox – came here recently. Her vehicle was spotted by the Fulani, who came out hunting for her and only just missed their target. Because of attacks like this, almost nobody comes. Just one more reason why these atrocities do not attract the West’s attentions.The task of chronicling the outrages continues nonetheless. Village leaders keep ring-binders of their dead. Some havephotograph albums of what their villages have been through: old women set alight; young women raped and shot; babies hacked to death……A villager takes me to the bridge where the village leader and 13 others were recently gunned down in a Fulani ambush. Nigerian Army troops watched the whole thing from their base a couple of hundred yards away – just as they did the destruction of another Christian village, theremains of which sit, burned out and silent,right opposite them. The army seems to have no interest in protecting the Christians, while the government in Abuja appears to care more about passing new laws on cattle-rustling than on protecting human lives. When challenged after a massacre, soldiers often claim that they didn’t receive any orders – or had been commanded not to intervene.In a line that’s parroted by some NGOs, the government says that this is a land or agricultural dispute. Yet it is the Christian communities who are being systematicallyforced off it. If anybody wanted to find the culprits, they could find them living and farming on the land they have stolen. But such arrests never happen.The complicity between the army and the Fulani is obvious. Between Barakin-Ladi and Riyom – in sight of another army post – is a sacked Christian village which localssay now acts as a Fulani arms dump. The world’s indifference gives the Nigerian government the advantage in what looks like a quiet effort to rid northern Nigeria of its Christians.The moment three years ago when Boko Haram abducted 300 Christian schoolgirls from the north-east and ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ briefly trended on Twitter was the closest this situation has come to catchingthe world’s attention……But similar atrocities go on all the time. At an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp Deborah, 31, describes the 18 months she spent held captive by the group. When they burst into her village, theIslamists killed her husband and the rest ofher family, forcibly converted her and ‘married’ her off to one of their 20-year-old fighters. He complained about her bad temper and argumentativeness, but he stillraped her, producing the nine-month-old boy now suckling at her breast. A Christianpastor has urged her to love and cherish the boy as though he was her murdered husband.The first time she escaped from Boko Haram, she was recaptured and lashed 80 times as punishment. At least she is now unafraid of death. ‘What sort of death would I be running from?’ she asks. ‘I have already died once.’ At night, she says, a military plane would sometimes appear over Boko Haram’s camp and drop off supplies. ‘Look what powerful friends we have,’ her husband would boast as he pointed to the lights in the sky above.Even if the Nigerian Army does not supportBoko Haram, elements of it certainly do. Whenever an actual operation against the group is planned, they are always tipped off by forces within the country’s security apparatus.…If the international community meant anything by its promises such as the UN’s ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine, then what is happening could not go on. But the international community is uninterested. Governments like ours are uninterested. The world’s media is uninterested…The Christians of Nigeria are alone…

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/06/will-protect-nigerias-northern-christians/

who has been protecting them if not God, they can do well by arming themselves, I know to some extend IBO's have help northern Christians fight along side with them,

Too bad, if this is true!

WE WELCOME THEM ALL TO IGBO LAND INCLUDING MY YORUBA CHRISTIAN FRIEND SUPERSTARS1PANTHER

Alaniyiokorausa:
who has been protecting them if not God, they can do well by arming themselves, I know to some extend IBO's have help northern Christians fight along side with them,

wich of the God??

I sympathise with the Northern Christians. The Christians in bornu, kaduna, bauchi and the rest. the southern Christians have failed to reach out to their folks in the North.

The fulani massacre is purely a religious war. You think they can't get or import grass for their cows? It is a deliberate and careful attempt to subdue the Christians

yes its the very truth, can't read all through my eyes ar glassy wth tears for th suffering metted out to a people wth th full support nd knowledge of both the state and federal government. The Lord is Our Strenght! He shall surely see us through, IJN