Not Just Numbers…

The Western media reports don’t tell us who the victims are, just how many. The victims of war and terror attacks have no names and no faces. That makes it a lot easier for people in the West to ignore the slaughter.

So many numbers of dead are tossed at us on Internet news sites that we all seem to get numb to the reality that these are people. It hits the average person about as hard as killing space creatures in a video game.

But the reports aren’t just numbers, they are real people like the parents of Jiret!

Jiret, age 9, parents were both killed on Christmas Eve, 2023 at Darwat community of Barkin Ladi just south of Jos, Nigeria.

Jiret witnessed the murder of his mother who was trying to flee from Sunni Muslim Fulani killers. As she tried to escape, she was shot in the back by a Sunni Muslim gunman. She fell to the ground and died immediately.

Jiret’s father was trapped in the house and burnt to death. The family home was destroyed, and the car burned as well. Now the children have no home to go back to.

In all, seven children were left behind. All except the oldest have quit school. The oldest brother was housed at a college learning to be a teacher, and he is still there. Even if he quit school and returned to try and care for his younger siblings, there would be no home and no livelihood for them.

Jiret’s story is not unusual. The orphans vary from toddlers to teenagers.

Precious from the Fungzai community is just 18 months old. She was the only child of a young couple who were murdered by the Sunni Muslim Fulani on Christmas Eve, 2023.

The name her parents gave her, Precious, gives us a glimpse of the family life they had planned for her. For the last six months she has been cared for by other families at an IDP Camp in Mangu.

Now, relatives have been found to take Precious into their home, and we will give them support for as long as needed.

Success, a female age 12 and her brother Nanman, age 4, have also now been accepted by relatives of their murdered parents.

Many children also died in the attacks. Several of the stories are of children who lost not only their parents but brothers and sisters as well.

Some of the families are very large, making placement in the same home difficult. One family of Bokkos had five surviving children under 18 years old! Both parents were murdered by the Sunni Muslim Fulani.

What were you thinking on Christmas Eve? Were your thoughts about the joy of family on Christmas Day?

These children and their murdered parents had the same thoughts of family and the joy of Christmas Day, when suddenly Fulani terrorists entered their village and killed hundreds at a time! Every home was burned. Many were burned to death in their homes.

Since then, the younger children still in the IDP camps have been totally dependent on charity. In a true Christian spirit, adult women whose husbands were murdered, and their farms destroyed, have come forward to care for children at the IDP Camps who are not their own.

Many of the older teens who lost their families have entered the job market, and this will reduce the overall number of orphans we need to place.

In some cases, an older teenager from a family has managed to find employment and is caring for younger siblings. Some of the older teens have also moved to the city of Jos from the rural areas where they could not find employment. Some have taken younger siblings with them.

Because of the movement and ever-changing landscape of the situation the process of finding homes for the children from the 2023 Christmas massacre has taken longer and been more difficult than our planning committee had anticipated.

There are more victims: There have recently been several attacks on the mining areas in Plateau State. An attack on May 21st in the Waze District of Plateau State killed 40.

The Voice of America (VOA) has blamed Climate Change for the violence. (I am not joking.) This is the quote from the VOA on the attacks in Waze: “Climate change has escalated tensions over grazing land, water access and other resources such as the state’s metal reserves.”

The attacks were not isolated, and there are new orphans seeking homes from attacks in several areas of Plateau State. Please pray for the surviving victims of the attacks.