Nigerian church elders hold Sunday service amid the ashes of their burnt-out church just two days after a devastating Boko Haram raid. COURTESY PHOTO.
Uganda Christian News has learnt of Christian worshipers in Nigeria who still come together for prayers despite their church building being razed down by a deadly terrorist group called Boko Haram.
The Barnabas Fund, an international Christian aid agency, reports that four church elders in the village of Garkida, held a Sunday service in their burnt out church building on 23 February, two days after Boko Haram militants abducted some of the church’s female members and set fire to the building.
The agency says heavily-armed militants on 21st February stormed into the premises during a women’s fellowship meeting and kidnapped some of the Christian women and left the building a burnt out shell.
“In spite of their anguish and shock, the pastors decided to continue to meet together to show that ‘church’ isn’t the building razed down, but the Christians living – the Christian body is the church,” a local Christian leader was quoted as saying.
The Barnabas Fund says the attack lasted around six hours, during which two other churches were also set alight, a local market looted, a health centre burnt down and two ambulances destroyed.
Furthermore, the jihadists approached the village in Adamawa State “in about nine trucks, and more than 50 motorcycles carrying at least two persons on each,” a local eyewitness told Barnabas.
The number of attacks by Islamist militant groups has sharply increased, since April 2019, according to Barnabas. Christians in Nigeria are on high alert, calling for urgent prayer against the onslaught of Boko Haram attacks against them.
