At least 50 people have been killed in Nigeria in an attack carried out by armed men in the middle of Pentecost mass in the church of San Francisco Javier, in the southern state of Ondo. According to witnesses, a group of five people began shooting indiscriminately both inside and around the temple, and a bomb exploded, before kidnapping the celebrant priest and a handful of worshipers. The balance so far is fifty dead and many injured, according to medical sources reported to news agencies.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the brutal attack. Nigeria is the object of frequent jihadist attacks against Christians, but these are almost always limited to the north of the country, which has a Muslim majority. Most of the 98 million Christians – out of a population of just over 200 million – live in southern Nigeria, where criminal gangs and armed separatist groups are often active.
A local deputy, Olayemi Adeyemi, has accused Fulani herders of the assault, who would like to protest against the restrictive livestock and grazing policies established by the governor of Ondo state, Rotimi Akeredolu, according to statements collected by the portal ‘People’s Gazette’. The characteristics of the attack – centered on the Catholic faithful, in one of the most important religious celebrations of the year – do not give much consistency to this thesis.
The religious hatred shown by the massacre is, however, more typical of the jihadist groups operating in northeastern Nigeria, in particular the bloodiest, Boko Haram, which tries to intimidate Christian populations into fleeing before proclaiming a ‘ caliphate’ in that territory.
According to the Pew Research Center, Christianity is growing in Africa more than in any other continent in the world. Today, three of the ten countries with the most Christians in the world are in Africa; if the trend does not change, in 2060 there will be six in the “top ten” list.
To the sociological phenomenon, which threatens the current balance of power, is added the transfer to lands of the Sahel and North Africa of jihadist cells and resources that have lost –today– the battle for the ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria.
Old and new armed groups preaching “holy war” wreak havoc in a huge triangle comprising Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Mali, preying on defenseless Christian civilian populations.
