Nigeria’s new president Bola Tinubu has moved quickly to try to address the violence that’s been sweeping across Africa’s most populous nation, claiming tens of thousands of Christian lives.
Reuters reports he has sacked police and security chiefs and vowed to create anti-terrorist forces to fight Islamic extremists. President Tinubu has made security one of his major priorities and promised reforms to the sector, including recruitment of more soldiers and police officers, while paying and equipping them better.
Nigeria’s military is currently stretched to the limit, fighting a long running Islamist insurgency in the northeast and banditry and kidnappings for ransom in the northwest as insecurity spreads to most parts of the country, much of it out of the government’s control.
At least 200 Christians have been killed since President Tinubu took office six weeks ago, and churches are still being destroyed. The latest raids claimed more than 30 victims in northern and central states just two weeks ago.
It’s a sharp fall on nearly 1,000 thousand believers who died in the weeks before he assumed leadership of a nation that faces record debt, sky-rocketing unemployment, power shortages and shrinking oil output. Reuters reports President Tinubu has implemented a raft of radical changes aimed at unleashing the full potential of Africa’s sluggish economic giant with a view to making it a US$1 trillion economy within eight years.
But that will also hinge on restoring national security. When President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015, many hoped the retired major general would successfully crack down on armed groups. Instead, they became out of control, with Fulani herdsmen the latest threat to Christians.
Bishop Wilfred Anagbe from Benue state explained to Catholic news outlet Our Sunday Visitor that the Fulani are not indigenous to Nigeria, but invaders who prey on predominantly Christian farmers who work the land of his fertile and historically productive region. Thousands have been killed in Fulani attacks since 2014. Insurgencies in Nigeria’s northeast have been operating for nearly 15 years and have killed as many as 50,000 people. More than two million others have fled their homes.
Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) predicts a mass exodus of Christians – especially young people – if the security situation does not improve drastically and soon. “If the Nigerian authorities do not address the conflicts concerning land, ethnicity, criminality, and religious extremism,as well as the breakdown in democratic values and the equal rights of its citizens including religious freedom, the cancer of Islamist jihadism and political disintegration evident in the northern half of Africa will spread,” said ACN’s Maria Lozano.
Amnesty International says protecting lives should be the Tinubu government’s “utmost priority.”
