Nigeria descends into holy war

Nigeria descends into holy war -- Christian villagers in the north of the country live in fear of the Boko Haram, an Islamist sect blamed in a string of deadly attacks. [Excerpts]

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Like many other Christian outposts in the spiritual homeland of Nigeria’s “Taliban,” the Victory Baptist Church in the northern desert city of Maiduguri no longer relies solely on God for protection.

A modest whitewashed spire in a skyline dominated by mosques, for the last month it has had a military guard to defend it from Boko Haram, the militant local Islamist sect blamed for a string of attacks nationwide in recent weeks.

The soldiers in the sandbagged machine-gun nest outside the church, though, were unable to save three members of the flock last week.

On [January 4], three days after Boko Haram ordered all Christians to leave Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria, Ousman Adurkwa, a 65-year-old local trader, answered the door of his home near the church to what he thought was an after-hours customer. Instead it was two masked gunmen.

“They shot my father dead, and then came for the rest of the family,” Adurkwa’s son Hyeladi, 25, told The Sunday Telegraph the following day. “One chased my brother Moussa and killed him, and the other shot at me, but my mother took the bullet in the stomach instead.”

Hyeladi spoke as weeping parishioners gathered for an impromptu memorial service in the Adurkwa family compound, where the parlour carpet was still stained with blood from the gunshot wound suffered by Mrs. Aduwurka, 50, who now lies in hospital.

But while the sermon from the local pastor, Brother Balani, urged “prayers for those who God has taken away, and comfort for those who remain,” it diplomatically avoided the more earthly question of who did it.

For one thing, no one can be sure the killing was not simply the result of a private feud. And for another, Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sinful,” and which wants hardline Shariah law across the whole of Nigeria, has a track record of killing anyone who points the finger at them publicly.

Yet some of the Adurkwa family’s neighbouring Christian households have already made up their mind, fleeing the district for fear they might be next.

(Freeman, "Nigeria descends into holy war," The Montreal Gazette, 1/7/12).