During an evening worship service on Monday (July 7), suspected Islamic extremists gunned down a Baptist pastor and another worshipper and kidnapped a woman in Katsina state, northwest Nigeria.
About 15 to 20 gunmen with Fulani accents stormed Bege Baptist Church in Yaribori (also known as Yari Bori) village, Kafur County, and shot the Rev. Emmanuel Na’allah Auta and Mallam Samaila Gidan Taro, according to news outlet TruthNigeria.
Church member Zakariya Jatau told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News that the pastor was leading a worship service and Bible study when he was shot.
“Another member, a lady, was also kidnapped and taken away to an unknown place,” he said, corroborating the account of another church member.
Congregation members said the slain Gidan Taro was a prominent convert from Islam, and that Pastor Na’allah had worked to reconcile the village’s Muslim and Christian communities, TruthNigeria reported.
Plateau State Killings
In Plateau state in central Nigeria, Fulani herdsmen killed 20 Christians in one area of the state in June, while predominantly Christian villages in another county in the state have suffered the slaughter of 80 of its residents since May, sources said.
In Mangu County, herdsmen razed 96 houses belonging to Christians in Gyambwas, Langai District as they killed two Christians on June 27, area resident Esther Luka said.
“This is the devastating effects of Fulani killings in Mangu Local Government Area of Plateau state,” Luka told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News in a text message. “On Friday 27th June, my friend’s dad, Rose Dapus, went to his farm at Gyambwas, with about 15 hired Christians to till the ground and to plant crops. At the end of the day, he paid and dismissed the hired workers while he remained with his son to put a few touches on the farm. That was when the herdsmen attacked the two of them. The son was able to run and escape to tell the story, but his father was shot dead.”
In the county’s Manja village, herdsmen on June 19 killed three Christians as they were working on their farms, residents said.
“The three Christians were on the farm, tilling the grounds and tending their farmland when the armed herdsmen attacked and killed them,” Mathew Kwarpo, a legislator in the Plateau State House of Assembly, told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “The terrorists during the attack in Manja village didn’t just kill the three Christians but also set fire on over 20 houses belonging to Christians.”
On June 11, herdsmen killed eight Christians in the county’s Chicim village, resident Jeremy Nyuwa said.
“The armed herdsmen invaded the community, which is only one mile from Mangu town, and started shooting Christian villagers they sighted,” Nyuwa said. “And in Bwai village, another Christian community, the herdsmen attacked Christians there on 10 June. During the attack seven Christians were gunned down.”
In Bokkos County, Fulani herdsmen in concert with other Islamic extremist terrorists have attacked 13 predominantly Christian villages since May, killing 80 people and destroying dozens of houses, sources said. Military authorities confirmed the attacks and sent forces to the affected communities.
Attacked on June 29 were the villages of Tulus, Hokk and Juwan, while 10 other communities were raided in earlier incidents on June 27, June 26 and June 2, Christian leaders said. A pastor’s house was burned down in the June 29 attack in Hokk.
Amalau Samuel, chairman of the Bokkos Local Government Council, described the attacks as “barbaric and inhuman.”
“The attackers came late at night and started killing innocent people,” Samuel said. “They were going from house to house, and where they could not gain entrance, they broke through the ceiling. Those affected mostly are the aged and children who could not run, while those agile fled for safety.”
Area residents said terrorists have camps in areas like Daffo, Mbar, Tangur, Pyakmallu, Butura and Kwatas, and that this information has been reported to Nigerian military authorities and other secret agencies.
Numbering in the millions across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise hundreds of clans of many different lineages who do not hold extremist views, but some Fulani do adhere to radical Islamist ideology, the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG) noted in a 2020 report.
“They adopt a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.
Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam as desertification has made it difficult for them to sustain their herds.
Nigeria remained among the most dangerous places on earth for Christians, according to Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. Of the 4,476 Christians killed for their faith worldwide during the reporting period, 3,100 (69 percent) were in Nigeria, according to the WWL.
“The measure of anti-Christian violence in the country is already at the maximum possible under World Watch List methodology,” the report stated.
In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they are in the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many hundreds, Christians above all, according to the report. Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others, are also active in the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities continue to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, according to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent years.
The violence has spread to southern states, and a new jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged in the northwest, armed with advanced weaponry and a radical Islamist agenda, the WWL noted. Lakurawa is affiliated with the expansionist Al-Qaeda insurgency Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, originating in Mali.
Nigeria ranked seventh on the 2025 WWL list of the 50 worst countries for Christians.
