The President of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), Reverend Stephen Panya Baba, says Christians in the Middle Belt and northern parts of Nigeria are not receiving enough support from their brethren in the south in the face of extreme persecution confronting them.
He disclosed this while featuring in a programme, “The Fathers” on Dove Television run by the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG).
The programme was anchored by Dele Oke.
Baba said persecution remained a major challenge faced by Christians in the Muslim-dominated north, adding that the faithful in that part of the country had always carried the burden alone without adequate support and backing from their counterparts in the south where Christianity is practiced without much harassment and hindrance.
Pew Research Centre says out of the about 180 million Nigeria’s population, there are 49 per cent Christians in the southern region and 49 per cent Muslim in the northern region.
The northern region is the epicentre of insurgency and ethno-religious violence in the last one decade. Christians are in the minority in the region and have experienced extreme persecution from terrorists who desire to create an Islamic state across the region.
Since 2009 when Boko Haram literally interpreted as “Western Education is forbidden” emerged, coordinated attacks have been launched against Christians in the region.
“It is just the kind of frustration that you have been expressing that we are not doing enough to be able to respond to some of these issues collectively as a Christian body,” Baba said.
“Most of the time it is the churches that are in the north that have actually been left to respond to the situation as best they can.
“Let me tell you that sometimes it is so frustrating that when attacks take place in the north, you expect that our southern brethren will even pick it up seriously in the papers and publicise it.
“And I think these are areas that we need to sit down with our southern brethren and leaders talk about what we do so that when things like this happen, even if they cannot send materials or financially, they should be able to at least speak out and tell the world.”
The ECWA leader said God had blessed Nigerian Christian community, adding that the blessing should be used to advance the faith.
He stressed, “Let me be sincere. God has providentially made it such that the Christendom in the country is blessed in one way or the other, in different ways.
“And the Christendom in the south, especially the south west, is so strong when it comes to media and communication and this is an area that they can really use to back us up when things like this happen. And we need, for example, the international community to know.
“So the church back in the south can help us to speak to our brethren, to bring out the truth because most of the time, the truth is covered and people don’t get to know the kind of devastation that is taking place right here in the north.”
Baba said the church in the Middle Belt and other parts of the north had never passed through the kind of persecution it is currently going through.
According to him, apart from the age-long denial of the right to land to build churches and discrimination in the area of access to social amenities and appointments, the advent of terrorisms and insurgency has worsened the fate of northern Christians and further endangered the practice of Christianity.
“The church in the Middle Belt and in the northern part of Nigeria has never passed through the kind of persecution that it has passed through of recent and it is passing through.
“Of course, the history of the denial of rights for land for the building of churches has always been there. The issue of discrimination against Christians in the north in terms of admission to tertiary institutions, universities, polytechnic and the rest has always been there, maybe in a milder form in the past but now it has become so severe.
“I don’t know if you read about a Christian girl in Niger State who scored 302 in JAMB far above what will ever be needed by any university to be admitted for a course in medicine yet she was denied admission in ABU simply because of the religious biases of the present ABU administration.
“Don’t forget that before now, one of our ECWA members of blessed memory now, Professor Nok, when they were looking for a vice chancellor for ABU, was interviewed alongside with others and he excelled so far above all others to the extent that there was a wide gap between his score in that interview compared to others but he was denied the vice chancellorship of ABU, Zaria because he is a Christian. There was no doubt about that.
“It was obvious because he was a Christian and that is the kind of persecution that the Christians in the Middle Belt and the northern part of Nigeria have been facing.
“But of course a few years back, the Boko Haram terrorist organisation has been there. More deadly after them came the Fulani Jihadists who have been going up and down killing and destroying and their targets are obviously Christian communities. So persecution is the greatest challenge of Christians in the north.”
Baba said persecution of northern Christians has left in its trail abject poverty and other social problems.
“And then it is the persecution that is now leading to other social-related challenges like poverty.
“Of course if you have been displaced from your ancestral home, you cannot farm. Poverty sets in. This is what is happening to many believers today who are still in the IDP camps trying to manage with their relatives in many other places.
“Apart from the fact that a lot of our churches have been burnt down, many Christians can hardly go deeper into the bush to farm because their lives are threatened.
“There have been cases where people have been killed on their farms. To even farm as they should farm is not possible again. This has social implications in terms of their inability to fend for their families. There are many other related issues that come as a result.”
The ECWA leader denied that there was a deliberate policy on the part of northern Christian leaders not to reach out to their southern brethren.
He appealed to Christians and leaders of the faith in the south to always come to the aid of their northern counterparts, warning that if the persecutors succeed in their bid to exterminate Christianity in the north they would turn against the south.
“There is no deliberate policy for not reaching out to them in the south. But I think we just need to intentionally make efforts. Like I said, if we have not been doing it before because things have been easy, now persecution is forcing us to rethink and to know because we cannot survive this except we truly come together.
“Don’t forget that if the church in the middle belt and the northern part of Nigeria is destroyed, the next target will be the church in the south.
“So the sooner we can come together and speak as one voice and respond to this situation in common to threat to us, to Christendom in Nigeria, the sooner we can do that the better.”