The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) have welcomed a recent European resolution that condemns the 2023 Christmas massacre in Nigeria. However, the bishops lament that the text downplays the religious causes of the violence.
The bishops have reiterated their grave concern over the persecution faced by Christian communities in Nigeria, and have called on European Union institutions to give a more incisive response to Islamist terrorism in the West African nation.
In an urgency resolution adopted in the past week, the European Parliament (MEP) strongly condemned the Christmas massacre committed in December 2023 by Muslim Fulani militants in more than 160 villages in the Barkin Ladi, Bokkos, and Magu authority areas of Plateau State, in central Nigeria.
In the attacks, in which eight churches were reportedly burned down, about 200 Christians were killed, more than 300 suffered injuries, and several have been left without homes. The violence reportedly displaced some 15,000 people.
In the adopted resolution, members of the European Parliament highlighted “the role of climate change, competition for scarce resources, and the disappearance of effective mediation schemes” in the conflict between mainly Christian farmers and Muslim Fulani herders.
While welcoming the resolution, COMECE objected that the text downplays the religious dimension of the incident, and its terrorist nature as highlighted by the Nigerian bishops according to whom the “continued havoc caused by armed herdsmen in various parts of our country, can no longer be treated as mere clash between pastoralists and farmers” but should be treated “as acts of terrorism.”
“Environmental and economic pressures,” Father Manuel Barrios Prieto, the General Secretary of COMECE, said, “cannot sufficiently explain the ferocity of the attacks and their coordinated and systematic patterns committed by Fulani Islamist terrorists.”
The 2023 Christmas Eve attacks are not isolated cases. Amid growing security challenges in Nigeria, ranging from Islamist terrorism to banditry, Christians are the most targeted and vulnerable.
COMECE also recalled that in a recent attack which occured on January 2024, Fulani infiltrated terrorists killed more than 30 persons, and destroyed several houses and worship centres. In September 2023, seminarian Na’Aman Danlami Stephen from the Diocese of Kafanchan, was burned to death in a heinous terror attack. Additionally, over 2 million Christians in Benue State have been internally displaced due to violence.
Therefore, the European Bishops urgently called upon the EU to take “robust measures in line with its legislation and employ diplomatic channels to ensure the protection of all citizens in Nigeria.” In this context, it can be said that, the EU Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief, and the EU Special Representative for Human Rights could also give a valuable contribution.
The bishops had already called on the international community to stop the growing persecution of Christians in Nigeria in 2020. In May 2023, COMECE received Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, and facilitated a dialogue meeting with representatives from the European Union and its Member States.
The scourge of kidnapping for ransom remains a pervasive threat for the Catholic Church in Nigeria. Priests and religious are regularly kidnapped by bandits, with the most recent incident occurring in early February 2024, when two Claretians (Missionaries of the Immaculate Heart of Mary) were abducted in Plateau State by some armed men. They were released a few days later and placed under care.
