Peril of Christians in Nigeria Likely Stemmed From Migration of Islamic Fundamentalists

"My friends are Muslims. We go to school together. We drink together and we’re happy to party together. They're not bad people. Muslims are not bad people. They’re good people", Eholor, 58, told Sputnik.

"These fragments have always existed. But they have not been so serious, so popular or so legitimate as right now. For example, we have been fighting the Boko Haram insurgency for a number of years. They’re a bunch of uneducated people who hated the Western education. They were naive and myopic. But the military budget supposed to be used for fighting Boko Haram went into foreign bank accounts in Switzerland or America. So they couldn’t root out the Boko Haram", he said.

“After the Boko Haram gained ground, they invited more Fulani herdsmen [to Nigeria]. These people start to destroy crops of farmers. They were raping women and they were killing people. And from there, they moved to kidnapping people for ransom. Kidnapping becomes a legitimate business for the Fulani herdsmen", Eholor said.

“The Fulani herdsmen did not exist until this president became a leader of this country. The Fulani herdsmen started about 3-4 years ago. They were testing their ground. They were supposed to be people who were breeding cows, right? But they were not really doing that. They were getting to know the nook and cranny of the villages, because they were foreigners who wanted to succeed in the elections. Our border became very porous. We’re wide open for those foreign elements to assist him winning the election. But the agreement they reached, he [the president] could not fulfill it because they started destroying, raping and kidnapping. I can tell you categorially that this started about five years ago,” he said.

"This issue has a political undertone, because the Christians and Muslims have lived very peacefully together over the years in Nigeria. So I am not going to say that religion is our problem. No, I think leadership has failed us. Leadership is our problem not religion. This is purely a leadership failure. President Muhammadu Buhari has failed us and is a religious bigot. Let’s not forget that our president is from the North. He’s a very hardcore Muslim. He knows who are the terrorists and he refused to name them as terrorists. When people are named terrorists, we can have support from the Western world and it becomes a global fight", he said.

"They are mostly Muslim Fulani. Most of these Fulani are not from Nigeria. They’re from Mali and Niger. They are migrants who were not accommodated in wherever they call their country. Because from the history of what I learned as an adult, they don't really have a destination and they don't know where they are going. They’re like zombies that can overthrow the king of the country and become the king there. So that is the problem we are facing", he said.

"When the issue of blasphemy came and when they killed an innocent Christian girl and burned her body, the police told us that the guy who used the matches was from Mali and he was no longer in Nigeria. That’s why the guy hasn’t been found until today. So that clearly tells you that they are bringing their fundamentalist idea and their crazy idea to brainwash the some of the Nigerians. We call them Almajiri, who are mostly illiterate children. They don't go to school. All they do is go to the street and beg for food. So they’re being targeted by the fundamentalists. They were told that Christians are bad and Christians are the problem. But we’re not their problems as Christians. The problem is they don’t educate their citizens", he said.

"Even during that incident [church attack] on Sunday, another attack happened in a neighboring village where people were also killed. But they don’t report it. They don't report it because they don’t want to scare foreigners who are committed to investing in Nigeria. Nobody wants to invest in a country that is not peaceful, right? The media clearly did not report it. It’s not that it’s underreported. It’s like you don’t hear anything, but it happens daily", he said.

"When they see you with a Bible or a cross, they’ll kill you. If you wear a cross, you have to conceal it. If they see you’re walking alone, they'll take you out", Eholor said.