The Gazette | July 2, 2020
The leadership of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, otherwise addressed as Ekklesiyya Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN) in Hausa, claims it has lost over 8,370 members to attacks by Boko Haram in the northeast.
The EYN, which has its headquarters in Kwarhi, Adamawa State, but has branches mostly across the northeast, also said at a world press conference in Yola Thursday that President Muhammdu Buhari did not paint the right picture when he said in his June 12 speech on Democracy Day that residents had returned to all areas of local government once Boko Haram had taken over.
The President of EYN, Rev Joel Billi, who delivered the press conference text in Yola, stressed that the EYN is the single Christian denomination that was hardest affected by Boko Haram ‘s attacks.
According to him, besides more than 8,370 members and eight EYN pastors who died in Boko Haram ‘s attacks,“over 700,000 members have been displaced, with only seven out of 60 District Church Councils not directly affected by the insurgency.”
The president of the EYN added that 300 of the 586 branches of the church were either burned or destroyed by Boko Haram in some way, and that an unspecified number of our members’ houses were either burned or robbed.
He said several leaders had been abducted, and that 217 of the 276 Chibok school girls abducted were EYN leaders