Christian Students Attacked in Nigeria by Muslims

Muslim students in Nigeria are turning to deception and violence to get Christian students thrown out of public high schools, according to report in Christian News Today. A group of Muslim students accused a Christian student of writing a “blasphemous” article about Muhammad, and consequently went on a rampage.

One of the injured minors who suffered knife and machete wounds, Ahmadu Inuwa, said the accused Christian student, Ashiru Danlami, could not possibly have written the alleged English-language article as he could hardly speak in English, much less write in the language. Inuwa said school authorities had established this fact.

The Rev. Samaila Kogo of the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA), from Sumaila, told Compass his investigations showed that Muslim students wrote and published the blasphemous article as a pretext for attacking Christian students. This strategy, he said, is used in schools across northern Nigeria to force Christian students out of schools.

The enfuriating part is that the school tried to expel the student, not because it believed he had written the article, but because the school knew about the Muslim students’ plans to attack the Christians if they continued attending the school.

“In spite of the suspension of Danlami from school, the plan to attack Christian students there went on, and this forced all these Christian students to flee from the school,” Rev. Kogo said. “It was at this point that the school authority and the police met and decided that the Christian students be called back to school with an assurance that nothing would happen to them.”

Nevertheless, only two of the 57 Christian students who had fled threats dared to return to the school, he said. Inuwa and Isiaku Dogo – final-year students with only a few months to graduate – felt they needed to be in class to prepare for finals. Muslim students assaulted them with knives and machetes.

Having injured the two Christian students, Christian sources said, the Muslim students went directly to the town’s police station, where they killed the Christian police officer and burned down the police station.

This is another case of a society that cows in fear of violent Muslims instead of standing up to them and demanding that they obey the laws of civility and common decency. Pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ in Nigeria that they will stand strong in their faith and defend the Gospel.