After The Lynching Of Deborah Yakubu, Another Blasphemy Allegation Sparks Violence In Bauchi State

Violence by Muslim mobs in Nigeria’s Bauchi State on 20 May has left the minority Christian residents of the north wondering whether the region’s blasphemy laws are aimed at eliminating them completely, writes Masara Kim.

Just over a week after the brutal murder of a Christian college student, Deborah Samuel Yakubu, in Sokoto, Muslim residents attacked Christians in Katanga, the seat of Warji county in Bauchi State, near the border with Kano.

As in Samuel’s case, locals accused a female Christian health worker, Rhoda Ya’u, of blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed, following a comment she made in a government employee WhatsApp group. According to witnesses, the accusation led more than 200 teenagers, led by a few adults, to gather to attack Ya’u.

Read the full report at nigeria-report.org.

Meanwhile, after making a factfinding trip to Plateau state, the Nigerian human rights activist Monsignor Obiora Ike has warned that the persecution of Christians and the demographic displacement of minorities in the Middle Belt has taken on genocidal dimensions and is “a crime worse than that carried out in the town of Bucha in Ukraine”.

Christians in Nigeria, according to Ike, “are systematically disenfranchised and subjected to constant persecution and martyrdom in the 21st century, with over 30,000 killed in the last decade alone. Many more have been kidnapped, brutalized, or driven from their homes. There are now over two million internally displaced persons in Nigeria”.

You can find the full report here: nigeria-report.org

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