A Nigerian church, Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN), has said it lost more than 8,370 members to the Boko Haram Insurgency in the north eastern part of the country.
It said eight pastors were among those it lost.
EYN is an Anabaptist Christian denomination with more than 100,000 members.
EYN president, Reverend Joel Billi, disclose this at press conference in Yola, the capital of Adamawa State of Nigeria. The conference, he said was convened to review and highlight the effects of insurgency and the state of the nation, on the Church’s activities.
He said 25,000 members of the church, also known as Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, were currently taking refuge in neighbouring Cameroon, while more than 700,000 were in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps.
Mr Billi said the activities of the terrorists had affected more than 1.5 million members, and caused huge damages to the church’s places of worship in the North East region.
“It could be recalled that EYN has lost over 8,370 members and eight pastors with the numbers increasing on daily basis,” he said.
“Over 700,000 members are displaced and about 25, 000 are currently taking refuge in Cameroun and Chad Republics.
“About 300 of the 586 churches have been either burnt or destroyed with uncountable number of houses belonging to our members looted or burnt too.”
The EYN stated that out of the 60 District Church Councils, only seven of them were not directly affected by the insurgency.
He also said many of the members of the church were abducted by the insurgents.
According to him, 217 out of the abducted 276 Chibok school girls belonging to the EYN.
Billi explained that the EYN is the single Christian Denomination that is worst hit by activities of the Boko Haram terrorists.
He praised the renewed zeal of the military and other security agents in the fight against insurgency.
He, however, asked Nigerian government and the governments of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, which were most hit by the activities of the insurgents to as matter of urgency, rescue the remaining abducted Chibok school girls and reunite them safely with their families.
He said, “I also call with a loud voice, on the federal government, under President Muhammadu Buhari, to rescue Leah Sharibu, Alice Loksha, and hundreds of others abducted by the Boko Haram.”
He lamented that there were still several villages and communities that had been deserted by their inhabitants due to continuous attacks by Boko Haram.
Mr Billi also urged President Muhammadu Buhari to, as a matter of urgency, deploy at least a Battalion of military to the deserted areas behind the Gwoza Hills, to ensure the speedy return of the IDPs to their ancestral land.
“Government should immediately reconstruct and rehabilitate all houses, schools and worship places, destroyed by the insurgents in the deserted villages, through the Northeast Development Commission,” he said.
“Government should also deploy more security personnel to volatile areas to mitigate further attacks.
“The federal government should equally marshal out plans to evacuate the over 47,000 Nigerian refugees in Cameroonian Camps, back to their ancestral homes, by the end of 2020.”
The EYN leader appealed to the government to live up to its constitutional responsibility by putting a stop to the continuous killings, abductions, rape and all forms of criminality across the country.
A report by Open Door USA in January ranked Nigeria 12th among 50 nations of the world where Christians are most persecuted.