1,450 Christians killed in Benue, 1,400 in Plateau, 822 in Kaduna, 730 in Niger in 2023, says Intersociety
18th February 2024
From Jeff Amechi Agbodo, Onitsha
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) has said that Nigeria has become the second deadliest Genocide-Country in the world accounting for more than 150,000 religiously motivated defenseless civilian deaths since 2009, fifteen years of Boko Haram Jihadist uprising in Nigeria.
The group said that 1,450 Christians were killed in Benue, 1,400 in Plateau, 822 in Kaduna, 730 in Niger in 2023.
Intersociety said that over 8,400 Christians were abducted in 2023 and 840 never returned alive from captivity while Military, Police abducted 800 in 2023 in South-East who never returned alive till date.
The Chairman of Intersociety, Mr Emeka Umeagbalasi, said in a statement that Nigeria’s alarming death toll is only surpassed by the battered State of Syria which has been embroiled in devastating civil war since 2011 with civilian deaths of 306,000 out of about 21.5m citizens.
“The Nigerian death toll would have been more than five times higher than those of Syria if the country had engaged in open genocidal warfare-with over 200m citizens. The massacre of Christians in Nigeria is now dubbed “Silent Genocide” or “Jihadist Genocide of Christians”. Killings and associated grisly and egregious violence against persons or groups and properties of international coloration; perpetrated on the grounds of ethnicity and religion accounted for over 150,000 defenseless civilian deaths since 2009, leading to burning down or wanton destruction of tens of thousands of civilian dwelling houses, over 18,500 Sacred Places of Christian Worship, 1000 Traditional Religious Sanctuaries and 2,500 Christian/Traditional Learning Centers during which over 59,000 square kilometers of landmass (twice the size of South-East Nigeria) ancestrally belonging to indigenous Christians and non Muslim others were seized and their owners uprooted and sacked in at least ten states.
“The over 150,000 religiously related deaths in Nigeria in fifteen years had included ‘direct deaths’ of at least 100,000 and ‘indirect deaths’ of 50,000. Among the over 50,000 ‘indirect deaths’ were those abducted and killed in captivity by various Islamic Jihadists; classified as “victims of the enforced disappearances”. In Law and Criminology, ‘Enforced Disappearances’ and ‘Torture’ have no excuses or exonerative defenses at perpetration and can be perpetrated by state actors or non-state actors or someone or individuals sanctioned by a state actor or state actors.
“According to available local and international statistics, “Boko Haram and allied others have been responsible for abduction and disappearance of at least 22,500 mainly defenseless Christians between 2009 and 2014”; during which “they also wantonly destroyed or burned down 13,000 churches and 1500 Christian schools, directly killed between 11,500 and 12,500 Christians and forced over 1.3m others to flee to avoid being hacked to death or forcefully converted to Islam” (Ms. Anne Mulder and Open Doors USA: 2015).
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