Islamist Fulani militants slaughtered some 700 defenseless Christians during May 2023 as a parting gift to outgoing Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari, a leading human rights organization reports.
Emeka Umeagbalasi, a Catholic human rights activist and chairman of the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, declared in a June 12 report that Plateau State was the worst hit, accounting for the murders of 350 Christians, while another 110 Christians were massacred in Benue State.
Going back slightly further, the report notes that at least “1,100 defenseless Christians were hacked to death by Nigerian Government backed Islamic Jihadists in the past 60 days or between 12th April and 12th June 2023,” an ongoing slaughter translating to a “daily average of 17 Christian deaths.”
The period under review represents “one of the bloodiest in anti-Christian attacks in Nigeria,” the report added.
Regarding the year-to-date, 2,150 Christians “have been slaughtered by non-state actors/Nigerian Government backed Islamic Jihadists in the past 160 days, 1st Jan to 12th June 2023,” it said, while another “1,400 others were abducted.”
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law has been sharply critical of the outgoing regime of President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, accusing them of operating a government “for the destruction of Easterners and Christians.”
The Buhari regime channeled government energies and resources “towards systematic annihilation of Christians and defenseless citizens of Old Eastern Nigeria,” the group declared.
The Buhari-Osinbajo government “elevated Fulani Herdsmen and their ancient North-South grazing route system and had it transformed into State Jihadism project,” the Society stated.
The Fulani Jihadism project included “intelligence gathering, violent attacks, occupation and conversion,” it stated in a report, adding that “tens of thousands of defenseless Christians were massacred in eight years and tens of thousands of churches and other Christian knowledge centers burned down or wantonly destroyed.”
The reports echo similar findings reported in the Wall Street Journal in 2019, which noted that Islamist Fulani raiders have been waging a brutal war on Nigeria’s Christians to rid the country’s Middle Belt of non-Muslims.
In his account, Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote that the Fulani extremists pose a greater threat than the Islamic terror group Boko Haram, and are responsible for systematic jihadist attacks involving burning, raping, maiming, pillaging, and killing.
The campaign is a “slow-motion war” against Nigeria’s Christians, “massive in scale and horrific in brutality,” Lévy wrote.
He also underscored the important fact that the Nigerian political bureaucracy is Fulani as well, including then-President Buhari, which explains the government’s failure to intervene to stop the slaughter.
“It’s hardly surprising,” said lawyer Dalyop Salomon Mwantiri as cited by Lévy. “The general staff of the Nigerian army is a Fulani. The whole bureaucracy is Fulani.”