Witnesses said the gunmen called out in Fulani and Hausa the names of specific Christian leaders as they hunted them through the village. Among the twenty-eight killed was the Rev. Markus Nyam, a pastor with the Church of Christ in Nations, and a retired army officer. Nigerian soldiers did not reach Kawel until roughly two hours after the attack began. As of this month, Nigerian police have named no suspects and made no arrests.
The European Parliament's resolution calls on Nigerian authorities to prosecute those responsible, to strengthen counterterrorism operations in the Middle Belt against armed militants and against Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, and directs the European Union's Special Envoy for the promotion of freedom of religion or belief to give particular attention to Nigeria's Christian communities. Lawmakers cited findings that Christians remain the most persecuted religious group in the world and condemned what they described as persistent impunity for attackers in Nigeria's Middle Belt.
The vote followed a pattern that has repeated itself for years across Plateau, Benue, and neighboring states, where predominantly Christian farming communities have absorbed wave after wave of raids from armed herdsmen, with little in the way of arrests or prosecutions to show for it afterward.
A Parliament Can Condemn. Only God Can Comfort.
Five hundred and ten votes against one is a rare thing in any legislature. It says something that lawmakers from dozens of nations, of every political stripe, could look at the facts out of Kawel and agree on what they saw. But a resolution, however overwhelming, cannot raise a pastor from his grave, and it cannot undo the two hours it took soldiers to arrive. Paper travels slower than a machete in the dark. My friend, if you have read this far and felt your stomach turn at the thought of gunmen calling out names in the dark, hunting men because they served the Lord's table on Sunday, you have felt something true. That anger, that grief, is not misplaced sentiment. It is the echo in you of a God who sees. He counted Rev. Nyam's days before one of them came to be, and He counted the day he died in Kawel village too.
Scripture does not promise the believer safety from the sword in this life. It promises something larger. The martyrs under the altar in the Revelation cry out "how long," and they are told to rest a little season longer, for the number is not yet complete. The blood of the church has watered the ground of Nigeria, and of every nation under heaven, since Stephen fell beneath the stones in Jerusalem. The world calls this tragedy, and it is. Heaven calls it a harvest that has not finished coming in.
"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints." (Psalm 116:15)
That verse is not sentiment for a funeral program. It is a plain statement about what God values. A pastor shot in his doorway in Bokkos County is not forgotten by heaven, whatever the newspapers do or do not say next week, whatever comes of the resolutions and the investigations that may or may not follow. The Lord who numbers the hairs of a man's head numbered the shots fired in Kawel, and He will settle every account in His own time and by His own hand.
Government exists for a purpose, and Romans tells the church plainly that the sword is not given to rulers in vain — they bear it to punish evildoers. Nigeria's government owes its Christian citizens in the Middle Belt the protection that office requires, and it is right, not partisan, to say so plainly. But no government on earth, however swift or however slow, is the source of the believer's hope. The name Kawel will fade from headlines within a season. It will not fade from the memory of God.
If you have family in the faith who suffer in places you will never see, do not let the distance cool your concern. Pray for them by name where you know the names, and where you do not, pray for them as the Lord already knows them — bought with the same blood, held by the same hand, promised the same crown.
"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul." (Matthew 10:28)