By Jude Atupulazi
These are not happy times for Christians in Nigeria. Never a time in the modern history of Nigeria has the nation been so sharply divided along religious and ethnic lines. This has turned the country into one large killing field, especially in the northern part.
Those being killed have mostly been Christians. The list is long and does not seem ready to end any time soon, given the scenario in the country. But by far the greater tragedy is that the government of the day seems loath to take action to check the country’s slide to anarchy.
And so on Tuesday, February 11, the latest victim of the orgy of bloodletting perpetrated by the untouchable Fulani terrorists was laid to mother earth. That victim was a young, vibrant seminarian of Good Shepherd Seminary, kaduna, by name, Michael Nnadi, of Sokoto Diocese, who, however, was an indigene of Uga, Anambra State. He was killed alongside a doctor’s wife after he was abducted from the seminary with three other seminarians.
His dead body was found by the roadside, three weeks after his abduction.
Since then the Christian community, and, indeed, the entire nation had been thrown into mourning. His death came in the wake of the abduction and beheading of the chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Adamawa Chapter, by same Fulani terrorists. Protests had trailed both developments, with Nigerians calling for the resignation or sacking of the country’s security chiefs, following their inability to check the killings. Some even called for the resignation of President Muhammadu Buhari for same reason.
Amid the protests and calls for the resignation or rejigging of the nation’s security apparatus,the orphaned seminarian was buried last Tuesday in Kaduna, with the Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Most Rev Matthew Hassan Kukah, delivering a homily that has since become a major topic of discourse across the country.
