Niamey (Agenzia Fides) – A few days before the massacre of the faithful of the Catholic Church in the small town of Owo, Nigeria (see Fides 6/6/2022), the Norwegian Refugee Council (NCR) has published its annual list of the 10 forgotten crises in the world. For the first time since the publication of the report, all ten crises are in Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo leads the way, followed by Burkina Faso, Cameroon, South Sudan, Chad, Mali, Sudan, Nigeria, Burundi and Ethiopia. Father Mauro Armanino, priest of the Society of African Missions,
said: “The faithful had just celebrated the feast of Pentecost and had heard the passage describing the descent of the spirit in the form of tongues of fire on those present. From the fire of the Spirit to the fire of arms, the stage was short, dramatically short. One fire and the other fires, one of life and the others of death. Dozens of people consumed by the fires, neither the first nor the last in Nigeria, which for years has been slipping into the abyss of armed violence, corruption and the supposed and possible complicity of some politicians.” In the note sent to Agenzia Fides, the missionary, who works in Niamey, Niger, stresses that “to make a list of armed attacks in Nigeria would be pedantic and the litany of the dead, unfortunately to be updated daily, is indefinite. Already in 2020, a local NGO had drawn up a list of Christians killed in the first six months of the year: 1202, by Peuhl (traditional shepherds) and militants of Boko Haram/Iswap (Islamic State in the West African province). These attacks took place mainly in southern Kaduna. The NGO in question notes that these attacks are repeated with the complicity of the Nigerian government.” Father Armanino explains that while Christians are not the only victims of this war, they represent a considerable part of it. “For example, last month, houses were burned and shops looted in the north of the country on charges of blasphemy. There have been dozens of deaths in Benue State of parishioners who left the church and, as we remember, the stoning of a schoolgirl in Sokoto for blasphemy. Later, the church in Sokoto was set on fire, and in the following days the bishop was threatened with death.” To try to understand the facts, it is necessary to place them in the historical, economic and political context of the country,” said Father Armanino. The division created and real between the North and the South, the choice of Islamic law (Sharia) granted to different states of the North, and especially the great corruption of the military who, maneuvered by politicians, put themselves in the pay of those who pay them. Impunity reigns and the words of condemnation of President Buhari’s latest ‘fire’ sound predictable and ultimately hollow.” “From the fire of Pentecost,” he concludes, “to the fires of arms, the distance was minimal, only a few meters, but there is an abyss between the two, which only the cross of resurrection can help to cross. The time of the African martyrs is not yet over.”
(MA/AP) (Agence Fides 8/6/2022)
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