Benoît de Blanpré is the director of Aid to the Church in Need (AED), a Catholic association helping persecuted Christians around the world.
We know the terrible journalistic law of "
death by the kilometer
".
That is to say that a death that occurs one kilometer from home will affect as much as 10 deaths 10 kilometers away.
But if, by reading the French press, I applied this law to Nigeria, I would have to conclude that this country is somewhere on the Moon...
Read alsoFather Augustine Ikwu: “Since the attack on a church, all Nigerians have been living in terror”
What happened on June 5 is a barbaric, heinous act.
The terrorists pushed the vice so far as to position themselves also outside the church in order to be able to exterminate all those who managed to flee through the windows and doors.
A real butcher's shop with little media coverage.
The day before, yet another priest was kidnapped, Father Christopher Itopa Onotu, in the state of Kogi, in the heart of the country.
Previously, in Sokoto, a student was massacred by her classmates, beaten to death, for a message posted on social networks.
Immediately after the event, the city was the scene of violent demonstrations, not as a sign of solidarity with the victim, but to protest against the arrest of two suspects!
I'm only talking about recent news… In February, terrorists stormed an entire train: 160 people disappeared.
And all this in total Western indifference, which our interlocutors on the spot do not understand.
We received, at ACN, the testimony of Monsignor Matthew Ndagoso, Archbishop of Kaduna, on the edge of the Sahel: “
It takes two to dance the tango.
Our leaders rob us and take our money to the West, to Switzerland, to Paris, to London, to Frankfurt.
If the West did not accept their money, they would leave it at home
”.
Bandits, jihadists, Boko Haram or Ansaru (subsidiary of Al Qaeda) are only symptoms, assures this bishop.
The real leaders live at the head of the state.
In particular at the head of the army, under Fulani control, which remains at gunpoint when Christians are massacred by Fulani jihadists too.
However, our Western leaders as well as heads of multinational corporations deal with this administration.
Pivotal country in the Sahel
It should be added to this that Nigeria does not have a trivial situation, on the contrary it plays the role of a pivotal country, between Sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel, for better or for worse.
Its chaos maintains our disorders.
It is common knowledge that the drugs circulating as far as France transit from Latin America to the port of Lagos, the economic capital of Nigeria, before crossing the Sahara with the complicity of armed jihadist groups.
Furthermore, we are well aware of the problems linked to the influx of migrants.
Young Nigerian graduates are fleeing, mortgaging the country's future.
The poorest, for their part, overwhelmed by misery, seek elsewhere a radiant future in this West which acts alternately as a foil and a powerful magnet.
In the longer term, and even more decisively, Nigeria concerns us because it is a country whose weight will continue to grow.
It already brings together more than 200 million inhabitants, and in view of its demographic growth, it will double in 2050. Nigerian youth, so numerous, lack access to education, to care, to a job. .. This situation explains, if not excuses, why so many of them join armed groups that promise them social status and money.
Focus on Christian values
These armed groups, often of Salafist inspiration, see the West as a threat, and if it is their compatriots that they kill in the vast majority of cases, they nevertheless have the Christian values which subsist in our institutions in sight.
The Sunni Group for Preaching and Jihad, dubbed "
Boko Haram
", is hitting the bull's eye when it claims that "
Western education is a sin
".
This is what the infamous terms of this sinister organization mean, and they reveal the primary target of fighters who join it.
They see clearly that the education of populations, in particular that of young girls, represents an existential danger for their terrorist activities.
To the north, in states governed by Sharia, Christians are prevented from building places of worship or carrying out processions.
Finally, Nigeria represents an issue of prime importance because it is a country divided equitably between Christians and Muslims, and it could be a laboratory of understanding between religions.
In many regions, particularly in the center and south of the country, peaceful relations between Christians and Muslims exist.
But they are threatened.
To the north, in states governed by Sharia, Christians are prevented from building places of worship or carrying out processions.
And throughout the country, the echoes of attacks with religious connotations strain relations between communities.
I conclude by repeating the words of Bishop William Avenya, the bishop of the Catholic diocese of Gboko.
Faced with the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the north of the country, he challenges each of us: “
Don't wait for the genocide to intervene!
»
