Page 12 - Voice of the Persecuted Christians - Oct-Dec 2022 - 120

HELPING THE FAMILIES OF CHRISTIAN MARTYRS
Hassan John has known God’s protection on numerous occasions
What hope for the church in northern Nigeria?
In a special interview, our partner Hassan John explains what the future holds for Christians in areas where killing has reached genocidal levels; how God has protected and strengthened him personally and how the prayers and gifts from Release International supporters are helping to revitalise hope and win many to Christ
by the Christian south grew and
some sought solutions in military coups. But this simply deepened the religious divide and in 1967 a three- year war broke out that killed about a million southern Igbo Christians. You will know it as the Biafra war. In many ways, the country never healed from that war.
Q: From the UK it seems the situation in Nigeria is getting worse. How would you sum
up life there at present for Christians? And how do you see Nigeria – and, more broadly, West Africa – developing in the next few years? What are the biggest concerns, in terms of persecution?
Christians in Nigeria have long faced some level of persecution by the northern Islamic Caliphate, from the time the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) began transforming societies in West Africa. Those familiar with Nigeria’s history know that the experimental political arrangement for the country at independence in 1960 collapsed three years later;
Years of military dictatorship suppressed religious outbursts – although not without incidents like the Maitatsine religious riots in the 1980s and the killings and beheadings of Christians in Kano, Kaduna and Zaria, on accusations of blasphemies or insulting the Koran or the Prophet Mohammed.
an intrinsic fear of domination
As you say, things have got far worse with the violence perpetrated by radical Islamist groups in northern Nigeria. The terrorist Islamist sect, Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād (People of Islamic
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