Continued from Part 1 In Kaduna state an Assistant commissioner of Police, Isa Rambo was kidnapped on his way to Jos on the Saturday the 19th of Oc
In Kaduna state an Assistant commissioner of Police, Isa Rambo was kidnapped on his way to Jos on the Saturday the 19th of October 2019 and released the next day after his ransom was reportedly paid up. Six female (Christian) students and two teachers were not so lucky and spent 23 days in captivity before the Church could raise their N13.5 million ransom. Terrorists abducted them from Engravers College in Chikun Local government Area on Thursday the 3rd of October 2019.
* Leah Sharibu
Just one day before the students were released, my heart melted as we prayed with the aggrieved parents in Kaduna trusting God for their return. There was disquiet in my spirit as we prayed because I knew that the Church would sooner or later have to make a painful policy decision on behalf of the nation. The international community has been working to freeze the financial supply of the terrorists in Nigeria and the kidnap ransom is their own way of generating internal revenue. We know that every ransom paid is used for the purchase of more arms and the sponsorship of more kidnaps!
The Church knows that it a geometric progression and the continuation of this practice will expand the scope of terror operations. It is a painful truth that every Christian child released by the terrorist represents the funding of 10 other innocent children in the dance of death. Sooner or later CAN leadership will have to come up with a policy that will reflect the mind of Christ and put a stop to the madness because we cannot keep securing the release of one Peter to sponsor the kidnap of 10 Paul’s. This is a hard saying but a discussion that cannot be avoided.
If the Church wants to be truthful, we are the only ones that can save Nigeria from the inevitable collapse of this present trajectory since the mosque is under pressure. We know that the supremacist agenda kills Muslims as easily as it kills Christians but we are the chosen ones who profess eternal life and have no fear of death because of God’s assurance. The terror agenda is in part a war of narratives and the terrorists seem to have won that already.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Tukur Buratai of the Nigerian Army cried out for spiritual assistance recently but we turned a deaf ear. The Army chieftain said “It is easier to defeat Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists than their ideology because, while we degrade the terrorists and their havens, the narrative of the ideology grows the group.” The fear of death is the greatest strength of terrorism and the Christian is the one professes eternal life in Jesus Christ who came to set us free from the bondage engendered by the fear of death. We are the peculiar people who mature to agree that to die is gain and to live is Christ.
We cannot continue to fuel terrorism with ransom money because the entire nation will eventually be engulfed in darkness. Sooner or later, we will realise that there is no choice but for the Church to stand up for Jesus Christ as Leah Sharibu has done.
Perhaps we should blame the Nigerian Church because we allowed the nation to forget that something similar happened in the days of human slavery when we were hunted down and sold in exchange for beads and gunpowder. Nigeria could never have become a nation freed from slavery, barbarism and colonialism if not for the martyrs of the Christian faith although the contributions of men like Mallam Ibrahim beheaded in late eighteen hundred’s at the Kano market by the Emir for his tolerant belief in Jesus Christ must be remembered.
We allowed the nation to forget that we paid the greatest price for the civilisation of our nation. Starting with hundreds of missionaries, neither time nor space will allow me to list the returned slaves, and early converts who paid the supreme sacrifice to stop human sacrifices, the killing of twins, cannibalism and the inhumane slave transatlantic slave trade.
On the 1st of October 1960, the Church Missionary Society printed a special independence Amethyst text Bible carrying a frontispiece portrait of Samuel Ajayi Crowther. It was meant to be an Ebenezer or reminder of our sacrificial investments so that the darkness of bondage would never return.
How can the Church ever become a witness of Christ to the government and the nation if we are petrified with the fear of death as all others? The CAN president is a keen theologian but this matter is an extremely delicate issue. We must unite the Church and put a stop to this reckless spread of the fear of death if we believe that Jesus Christ really died and was resurrected. To know Gods opinion, we need not open the Bible because He sent Leah Sharibu as a living epistle to this nation.
Leah Sharibu set the standard by shunning the toxic freedom of the world because like Apostle Paul, she knows that she is freer in Christ despite the chains. She had the option to deny Christ and walk into the Nigerian definition of freedom but she esteemed the reproaches of Christ as greater riches than her Nigerian citizenship.
Perhaps we need to open a national diary in the name of Leah Sharibu example for those who are persuaded of eternal life to sign that no ransom should be paid if we ever get kidnapped by terrorists. After all we are the circumcision who demand that Christ must be glorified in our bodies whether by life or by death. We did mention that there was a spiritual potency to this global terrorism agenda.
What I have laid out here may be novel to the Christian in southern Nigeria but it is nothing new to the matured Christians of Northern Nigeria. The president of CAN is a man that needs all our prayers rather than criticism in this hour. Serving in the Christian Association of Nigeria is not only a thankless job but a dangerous one too. I remember a joint operation that the Macedonian Initiative undertook with CAN Kaduna to a town called Panbegwa in a bid to rescue two young girls that had been abducted and forced into marriage in 2006.
Before you could blink the rescue-team was surrounded by turbaned militants and it was the presence of our armed escorts that kept things from getting ugly. This why my heart bleeds every time I listen to armchair experts that are quick to crucify the Christian leaders that live on the front lines just because they visited one or two terror sites.
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