Days before Christmas, Chri-stians in Nigeria buried 40 people killed in terror attacks in the nor-thern Nigerian state of Kaduna, where several villages have been attacked this month by suspected terrorists from the Fulani tribe of northern Nigeria.
At a Dec. 22 inter-denomi-national memorial service, mour-ners were encouraged to take de-fensive measures against a years-long spate of terrorism and viole-nce in the largely Christian farm-ing communities of northern and central Nigeria – especially as government security officials have been criticized for failing to pre-vent terrorist attacks.
At the open-air prayer service ceremony, Fr. Benjamin Bala ex-horted Nigerians to “be ready in … ‘Holy anger,’ to respond to the natural sense for self-preservation which is also both divine and con-stitutional.”
“This requires us to do all within the law and our faith to and protect our lives. In Genesis 9:5, God says he will demand an account of every life; beast and man from us. Yes, God is our refuge and protector. But we must cooperate with him at all times to keep us safe and secure,” the priest said.
“These are indeed trying times for us. We cannot afford to be asleep. We must keep awake. We must not allow ourselves to give in to the antics of our atta-ckers. Let us not allow them to push us into doing things that are unlawful and acting against our Christian faith. Our faith teaches us to constantly pray and watch.”
The 40 victims include 33 men and boys, and 7 women and girls of several Christian traditions: 22 Catholics, 16 Evangelicals, and 2 Baptists.
The youngest victim of the terror attacks was two years old. The oldest was 65. Among the dead were 6 members of one family – father, mother and four children.
The victims were part of Malagum 1 and Sakong village communities in the southern part of the Kaduna state.