On Saturday night, October 3, four people died in Riyom County. Residents said two were shot in Rim village and two more in Wereng village. The next day, Sunday, October 4, attackers entered Mangor village in Bokkos County and shot two Christians to death. A local youth leader said three others were wounded there.
By Tuesday, October 6, gunmen had struck Jol village in Riyom County, and residents said the assault was still going on when word reached the outside. Nigerian officials had not confirmed the casualty figures at the time of writing, and the exact number of dead from the Tuesday raid was not yet known.
These were farming people. Plateau State sits in Nigeria's Middle Belt, where Christian farming communities have buried their own for years. Local leaders say the killers come at night, often to villages with little protection, and leave before help arrives. Late September brought a wave of attacks on mining sites in the state that residents said killed at least 12 Christians. An advocacy group that tracks the killings has put the toll for Christians in Nigeria at more than 3,000 in the first eight months of this year. That is one group's count, and it should be weighed as such. But the pattern in village after village is plain enough.
Three days earlier than the Tuesday raid, on October 8, a separate band of suspected jihadists, which villagers named as Boko Haram or its offshoot, hit three mostly Christian villages in Adamawa State to the northeast, and a church building was burned. Two different regions. Two different bands. One kind of grief.
What a grieving village is owed
A government has one first duty, and the Bible says so in plain words: it does not bear the sword in vain. It is there to protect the innocent and restrain the wicked. When a farmer cannot sleep in his own bed without fearing the dark, something has failed. Our own government has rightly kept its eye on Nigeria, and President Trump has spoken more boldly for persecuted believers than any recent occupant of the White House. Those who hold authority in Abuja, and those who hold it in Washington, should be reminded that the safety of ordinary people is not a favor. It is their charge.
But I want to speak now of something that no army can deliver, and that those families need more than anything else tonight.
A man in Mangor village went out on a Sunday and did not come home. Somewhere a widow is sitting on a dirt floor with children who keep asking when their father will walk through the door. Statistics do not touch her. Neither do statements from capitals. What touches her is whether there is a God who sees, and whether He is near.
The Word of God answers that without hedging:
"The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." (Psalm 34:18)
Nigh. Not far off, not busy with other matters. Near to the broken heart. That is no small thing to a mother who has just lost her son to a bullet.
And the Lord Jesus did not pretend that His people would live untroubled. He told them plainly what faithfulness might cost, and He told them what waits on the far side of it. Believers in Plateau State did not stumble into suffering by accident. They are living out a verse that many of us in comfort only read.
My friend, every life is made in the image of God. That is why these killings are not merely a political problem or a security problem. They are an offense against heaven, and heaven keeps its own account. No murderer escapes it, and no martyr is forgotten by it.
The believer is given a hard calling in the face of such evil. He is not told to pretend it is nothing. He is told not to be conquered by it:
- Pray by name for the families in Rim, Wereng, Mangor and Jol.
- Speak up for them with your own voice and your own vote.
- Give where you can through honest relief work reaching the Middle Belt.
The Scripture says it this way: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:21)
And the promise that holds up every one of those who died in Christ stands over this whole story like a lamp in a dark window:
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:10)
The gunmen took six lives in a weekend. They could not take the kingdom. That belongs to those who trusted Christ, and no night raid can reach it.