“Christians here are really suffering”: Catholic Bishop in Nigeria Advocates for Displaced Families in Need of Support

According to the bishop of Wukari, the sense of fear and helplessness is a great suffering that impacts the physical and spiritual well-being of those to whom he ministers. 

“Over 300,000 people are displaced,” Nzukwein told CNA. “I go around to celebrate Mass for some of these communities who are staying in schools.”

“But on the other hand, we’re still happy that we are experiencing growth even in those IDP [internally displaced people] camps,” he said. 

“People are experiencing the joy of their faith,” he continued. “They know they are suffering but they know that God is also present and they know this will not last forever.”

In light of the ongoing multilayered crisis in Nigeria, Father George Ehusani from Kogi state collaborated with the country’s National Universities Commission to establish a new Psycho-Spiritual Institute campus in Abuja to educate Christian leaders and laypeople in trauma counseling.

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“These things are very much needed, but we find it very difficult to raise funds to run those workshops and training,” he told CNA. 

Across the country’s Middle Belt region, an area often described as the “food basket” of the nation, several Christian families have witnessed their homes and farms being taken by force.   

Elizabeth, a member of the Church of Christ in Nations whose family is living in Jos, Taraba state, told CNA in a phone interview that international organizations should focus efforts to assist farmers whose “sources of livelihood” have been destroyed.

“A lot of Nigeria’s food comes from the north — from places like Plateau and Benue — and, due to the rising frequency of attacks, people are not able to go to the farms as usual,” she said. “Food is becoming really expensive [and] so this trickles down to everyone.”

Elizabeth told CNA many people have now become “accustomed” to violent attacks targeting Christian communities. 

Recalling when St. Finbarr’s Catholic Church in Jos was bombed in 2012, she said she was attending a Sunday service nearby at the time when she suddenly felt a “vibration in the ground” beneath her.

“You hear the sound of the blast, you know what is going on, and you just stay in church — I mean we are Christians, right?” she said. “You’re just thinking, ‘Well if my church is next it just means that I get to be with the Lord.’”

“This is the reality of Christians every day in the north [of Nigeria].”

Kristina Millare is a freelance journalist with a professional communications background in the humanitarian aid and development sector, news journalism, entertainment marketing, politics and government, business and entrepreneurship.