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By Luminous Jannamike, Abuja

THE July attack on the rectory of Christ the King parish in Yadin Garu, Kaduna state in which Rev. Fr. Mark Cheitnum was murdered in cold blood and his colleague, Donatus Cleophas, was taken away has exacerbated the religious fault lines in the North.

With reports of perhaps up to 99 independent attacks against Nigerian clergy recorded between January 2020 and July 2022 by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), the Southern Kaduna Christian Leaders Association, SKCLA, says the federal and state governments need to move fast and wisely to defuse the ticking bomb before the country is engulfed in an intractable conflict.

According to SKCLA’s chairman, Apostle (Dr) Emmanuel Nuhu Kure, no country that allows religious extremism to flourish has avoided bloodletting and socio-political disruptions.

For too long, extremists have wreaked havoc all over Nigeria in the name of religion, secure in the knowledge that the states and Federal Government lack the political will to punish their criminality

Attacks on Christians targeted on the basis of their religious identity have assumed a new dimension and taken the face of gender-based violence in August, 2022.

According to reports, a vehicle carrying four nuns from the southeast state of Imo to the neighbouring Rivers state in the Niger Delta, was ambushed.

The police claimed to have rescued the nuns within days of their abduction but did not comment on whether ransoms had been paid.

However, Apostle Kure strongly condemned the the rising cases of abductions of clerics; noting that in some cases; Christian leaders have been killed by their abductors, even after receiving ransoms.

He called on security operatives to always be proactive in their response to crime and criminalities, instead of being reactive.

Meanwhile, attacks on Christians in the country increased by 21 percent in 2021 compared with 2020. On average, monthly attacks have also risen by over 25 percent in the last year.

The Catholic Church has been the hardest-hit denomination, with data showing that half of all 120 clergy members abducted or killed within this period were within its fold.

The attacks have also been spread across the country’s six geopolitical zones.

In the North Central region, 32 attacks were recorded, making it the deadliest region for Christian clerics in Nigeria since 2020. The North East and North West recorded 9 and 17 cases respectively.

In May 2022, an extremists mob brutally stoned, flogged, and burned to death college student Deborah Samuel in Nigeria, in an attack fueled by hatred and blasphemy allegations.

The South West, often considered Nigeria’s safest region saw 11 attacks including killing of over 38 people at St. Joseph’s Catholic church in Owo, Ondo state.

There were 15 religious attacks in the South East and South South regions. The attacks spotlighted a possibly religious undertone to the country’s insecurity.

Prosecutions and convictions for these horrendous crimes are rare and the religious extremists expect to roam free as those who have unleashed violence in Kaduna, Bauchi, Borno, Kano and Katsina in previous orgies of bloodletting since 1987 did.

Successive federal and Northern state governments have been accused of stoking the fire of religion.

According to security experts, it is the failure of the various governments to prosecute perpetrators of these crimes that emboldens extremists, religious groups and individuals, even federal legislators, who view the constitution and secular laws as irrelevant.

In the same vein, religious leaders believe the government must not allow the extremists to tip the country towards failure.

They say that the police should identify and arrest all the perpetrators while swift prosecution by the various state governments should follow with very strong penalties.

For Rev. Fr. Evaristus Bassey, a former director of Church and Society Directorate, Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, the government should make a difference by going beyond making a statement that crime will be punished and that no one has the right to take the law into their own hands by prosecuting the perpetrators.

“The government is weak, and they (religious extremists) know this. That is why they use every opportunity to push their agenda of attacking Christians,” he said.

Archbishop Matthew Man-Oso Ndagos of Kaduna, spoke of fear and trauma, following the recent assassination of a priest from his archdiocese, Father Vitus Borogo, age 50.

“Everybody is on edge. All of us, the clergy, the laypeople, everybody. People are afraid, and rightly so. People are traumatized, and rightly so,” he said.

Nevertheless, Christians in the country remain optimistic and continue to profess their faith no matter the challenges that come with doing the incessant abductions of clerics and attacks on the followers of Jesus.