ICC Note:  Bishop William Avenya has been denouncing the hate crimes against Christians, which have taken place in Nigeria at the hands of Islamic radicals. He is concerned with the lack of interest on behalf of the western countries as Christian persecution continues to increase.

/20/2018 Nigeria (ACN ) – “PLEASE DON’T make the same mistake as was made with the genocide in Rwanda. It happened under our noses, but no one stopped it. And we know well how that ended.”

These are the words of Bishop William Amove Avenya of the Diocese of Gboko, in Benue State, Nigeria, where Christians form the majority of the population. He is only the latest of the bishops of Nigeria’s Middle Belt to have raised his voice to denounce what is an increasingly worrying phenomenon—the attacks by Islamist Fulani herdsmen on Christians in the region. In recent days there have been new attacks in the area of Jos, the capital of Plateau State, killing more than 100 people.

The Fulani Herdsmen have herded their flocks in parts of Nigeria’s Middle Belt for centuries and there have always been occasional clashes with local peasant farmers, the majority of whom are Christians today, and whose crops were frequently trampled and even destroyed by the herdsmen’s flocks. But whereas in the past these conflicts were generally either tribal in nature or driven by economics, today they appear to be religiously motivated.

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