As the world rises to the challenge of terrorism, there has emerged a campaign #BringBackOurGirls, which is being championed by the global community in order to call attention the plight of high school Girls kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria, and push for their rescue.
Chibok, a town in Borno State in North-Eastern Nigeria has in the past two weeks, been in the limelight, not for anything positive but for the fact that some men posses by demonic forces, armed themselves with guns and explosives, stormed into a girls’ high school and kidnapped about 230 girls from their dormitory.
I first heard the name of Chibok town in the year 2007 in the city of Maiduguri, the Capital of Borno State in North-East Nigeria, while I was on a research trip. The name of that town attracted my attention then because a Christian man from that town had his three children kidnapped forcefully converted to Islam in the city of Maiduguri.
The kidnap of these three Christian teenagers from Chibok, even though living in the city if Maiduguri with their parents would have naturally drew condemnation across the nation of Nigeria, but because of the conspiracy of some powerful Islamic forces and those in positions of power in the government of Borno State, the kidnapped case went unheard.
The focus of my researching was to identify problems of doing Christian ministry in an Islamic environment. It was in the cause of this that I stumbled on the kidnapped case. This Christian parent from Chibok town, whose identity I do not want to disclose in this article for security reasons, was living with his family in the city of Maiduguri. His wife was a former Muslim who got converted to the Christian Faith and married him. Their marriage was blessed with three children.
This Christian man was bonded in love to with his wife in spite of the difficulty they faced because of the wife’s conversion to the Christian faith. But events took a difficult turn for this Christian family when his wife took ill and later died. Muslim relations of the woman forcefully took away her corpse claiming that she was still a Muslim and buried her according Islamic injunctions.
Having had their way using brute force on the Christian man the Muslim relations of the dead woman subtly used pressure to get her three children to visit their mother’s family home in order to mourn her. But unknown to the children and their father, there was a plan by the Muslim relations to kidnap the children.
On getting to the house to mourn their mother, the children who were also Christians, were kidnapped and taken away to another house in the city of Maiduguri, where they were held incommunicado in detention by Muslim relations of their mother. All efforts made by this Christian father to rescue his children from Muslim relations of his wife became futile. Father and children were separated and they never saw each other.
He was bluntly told by Muslim leaders in the city of Maiduguri that because he was a Christian, an infidel, he could not be allowed to be with his three children. It was a traumatic time for this Christian from Chibok and his children. In an interview with me, he lamented on how government officials in Borno State and even in the state judiciary frustrated his efforts to reclaim his children.
The man got some lawyers and went to court asking for an order to restrain these Muslims from keeping his teenage children away from him. He said he needed to have the custody of his children to enable him give them the fatherly love they require since their mother was dead.
In the court as the case lasted, Muslim leaders and government officials ensured that there was travesty of justice as deliberately the judge who presided over the case denied the man from having the custody of his children because he was a Christian. I wept as I read the judgment of the court which gave the custody of the children to some Muslims.
I still have a copy of this judgment which was given to me by the father of these Christian teenagers. The judge stated clearly that under Islam, a non-Muslim cannot be given custody of Children unless he converts to Islam. The judge said his decision to deny the Christian of the custody of his children is rooted in Islamic law and jurisprudence.
The most excruciating experience for this Christian is that his children were not only forcefully taken away from him, but that they were forcefully enrolled into an Islamic School, where they were receiving instructions in Islamic religion.
I wrote an article in that year about this incident and I recall that it was published in some parts of the world by some online publications and news media. But that was all to it, as no government in Nigeria made any effort to rescue these Christian teenagers and reunite them with their father.
It is now, seven years after the the kidnap of these three Christian teenagers and their forceful separation from their dad, yet, we are still having this same ugly incident repeat itself in Borno, and now on a large scale. Over 230 girls, majority of whom are Christians, being forcefully kidnapped in their school dormitories by Muslim terrorists, and yet, the Nigerian government appears helpless in the face of this brigandage.
Chibok, a town in Borno State is a home to minority Christians in that state. It is, alongside Gwoza and Uba areas, places that provide Christians in Borno State with an environment they inherited from their forefathers. Christian missionary activities in Borno State were largely centred around these towns and hence, the Christian religious faith of majority of the people in the area.
Over ninety per cent of the kidnapped high school girls in Chibok are Christians. And the reason chiefly being that Christians value the education of their children, whether boys or girls, unlike Muslims who marry out their girls at the age of thirteen.
Ever since the emergence of insurgency in Borno State and other North-Eastern States of Nigeria, Chibok and other Christian towns and villages have come under attack from Boko Haram terrorists. The kidnapped of these young Christian girls is the hight of a religious madness that has engulfed Nigeria.
I have since the beginning of the Boko Haram insurgency, documented and chronicled ugly incidents of systematic attacks on Christians and the destruction their churches in the North-Eastern part of Nigeria. These are bloody stories of pains, anguish, and lamentations. Yet, what efforts had the Nigerian government made to check this menace? Nothing!
Most minority Christians in this part of Nigeria have been forced to flee their homes as thousands of them have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgents. Some of these Christians are now refugees in other countries like the Republic of Cameroon, while others have been displaced to other parts of Nigeria.
While Christians in Northern Nigeria are left with no other option than to lament over their plight, will other Christians across the world also look on without doing something about their plight?
The time has come for Christians in other climes who enjoy religious liberty and have the privilege to worship our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, to speak out against this evil and stand in the gap for persecuted Christians in Nigeria. Now, is the time to join the campaign to #BringBackOurGirls.
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