French philosopher documents deadly persecution of Nigerian Christians
Aleteia | John Burger | Dec 18, 2019
Bernard-Henri Lévy provides eyewitness testimony to killing, raping and mutilation by Fulani herdsmen.
The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has issued an SOS for Christians in Nigeria after witnessing a pattern of attacks against the community.
“Will history be repeated in Nigeria?” Lévy asks, referring to the Rwandan genocide of 1994, at the end of a long article in the French magazine Paris Match. “Will we wait, as usual, for the disaster to be consumed in order to be moved? And will we remain idly by while the Islamist international, contained in Asia, fought in Europe, defeated in Syria and Iraq, opens a new front on this immense land where the sons of Abraham coexisted for a long time? This is what is at stake on this journey to the heart of the Nigerian darkness.”
Lévy describes Christians he met in Nigeria and the mutilations they suffered from attacking Fulani herdsmen. In Godogodo, Kaduna State, he filmed the testimony of a young evangelist, Jumai Victor, who is missing an arm. The Fulanis came into her town at night on motorcycles, shouting “Allahu akbar!”
“They burned the houses,” he said. “Killed [a man’s] four children before his eyes. And, when [Jumai’s] turn came and they saw that she was pregnant, and a discussion started: some people did not want to see the event and we just cut her arm, with a machete, like the butcher: first the fingers; then the hand; then the forearm; and then the rest.”
Lévy had some difficulty traveling through areas where Fulani seemed to be in control. At one point, a man told him he “had nothing to do here.” Lévy found out that he was Turkish, and a member of a network of “religious mutual aid” funded by Qatar and responsible for opening madrasas, or religious schools, in the northern and central localities.