part of an arson campaign to drive out Christians from Nigeria’s troubled Kaduna state and other areas of the African nation, news reports said Tuesday, May 3.
Church officials confirmed to Compass Direct, a Christian news agency, that unidentified arsonists burned the Conquerors Chapel in the Hayin Banki sector of the city of Kaduna earlier this month destroying the meeting place of the Word of Faith Ministries congregation, "for the fourth time in five years."
News of the latest attack came a week after the influential Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) said it decided to relocate its headquarters after six of the denomination’s pastors were killed last year and more than 175 churches in the surrounding area were destroyed in Muslim violence in northern Nigeria’s Plateau region.
Although The Word of Faith congregation in Kaduna has rebuilt its sanctuary after each previous arson attack, many of the 500 church members have left because of fear, Compass Direct reported, Only 150 members are still visiting regular church services, the news agency suggested.
NO SUSPECT ARRESTED
To date, police have not arrested any suspects in the string of arson attacks. "This is the fourth time…No single Muslim has been arrested for acts of arson and terrorism against us. The government has not done anything to arrest the situation, ”said the Rev. Ndubuisi Chiazor, pastor of the congregation, according to Compass Direct.
On the day of the latest incident "we all left the church in my car after the meeting to fetch musical instruments and a generator we had left in another part of the town,” Chiazor added. “Just eight minutes after we departed, I was called on the phone [and told] that the church has been set on fire by some Muslims. I rushed back to the premises and found the church on fire. The building was completely razed within 40 minutes. Everything we had has been completely burned,” the pastor was quoted as saying.
The church is located less than a mile (about 1.6 kilometers) from the Baptist Theological Seminary of Kaduna, an institution that has also been burned down by Muslim extremists and later rebuilt, Compass Direct said.
THOUSANDS KILLED
About 10,000 people have been killed in recent Muslim-Christian clashes in northern Nigeria since 2001, according to official estimates. However church officials say the casualty figure is "conservative". In March, COCIN leaders reported that over the past four years, inter-religious violence has claimed 84,000 in Plateau state alone.
The confusing disparity in statistics, sources say, is due to the difficulty of verifying reported casualty figures and the tendency of government and religious leaders to distort information in order to serve partisan interests. (With BosNewsLife Research and reports from Nigeria)
