Zenger News Service | Doug Burton
The kidnapping of pastors for ransom has reached epidemic levels in Nigeria.
“Just in the last month there have been a lot of pastor kidnappings,” said Rev. Joseph Hayab, the president of the Kaduna Christian Association of Nigeria “During the last four and a half years we have seen at least 30 pastors from Kaduna State kidnapped, of which four were murdered,” he says. The police and army have yet to react to these cases, according to Hayab. The scourge of kidnappings in Kaduna State, the third most populous in Nigeria, is matched by attacks on clergy in all 16 of Nigeria’s northern states.
The Trump Administration has expressed concern to the President of Nigeria regarding a string of atrocities committed by the terrorist group known as Boko Haram and other terrorist groups. He pointedly mentioned the issue during a White House appearance with President Muhammadu Buhari on April 30, 2018.
But much more needs to be done and soon, according to Frank Gaffney, president of the Washington-based Save the Persecuted Christians.
“The murders of Christian clergy in Nigeria are not simply outrages that should be denounced in the strongest possible terms by the U.S. government and people of faith everywhere as crimes against humanity,” he said on Friday, August 23. “We should also regard them as precursors to a crisis with, ultimately, considerable national security and humanitarian implications for our country,” he said. “Christians will respond to this and other attacks by fleeing their country in vast — and unsustainable – refugee flows,” he said in a written statement.