Extremists kill Nigerian pastor, attack his hometown

Islamic militants in Nigeria have killed a Christian
pastor who had pleaded for his life in a video just days earlier, and a human
rights activist said Tuesday that other extremists attacked his hometown on the
same day.
The Rev. Lawan Andimi was abducted earlier this
month when Boko Haram militants attacked the Michika local government area,
where he was the chairman of a local chapter of the Christian Association of
Nigeria. He was killed on Monday.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari condemned
Andimi’s slaying, calling it “cruel, inhuman and deliberately provocative.”
“I am greatly saddened by the fact that the
terrorists went on to kill him even while giving signals of a willingness to
set him free by releasing him to third parties,” Buhari tweeted.
Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International in
Nigeria, called it “appalling” that Boko Haram followed up Andimi’s killing on
Monday with an attack on his hometown in the Chibok local government area of
northeastern Borno state.
In April 2014, 276 girls were abducted from the
Government Secondary School in Chibok. More than 100 are still missing nearly
six years later.
Andimi is the latest Christian to be killed by Boko
Haram or a breakaway faction that has ties to the Islamic State group.
On Friday, the Islamic State’s West Africa Province,
known as ISWAP, released a video which showed a hooded child with pistol in
hand execute a Christian man. On Christmas Day, ISWAP killed nine Christians
along with two other captives.
Boko Haram and ISWAP want to enforce strict Islamic
law in Nigeria and have reportedly forced some captives to convert to Islam
under threat of death. Nigeria’s Christian community is calling on the
government to do more to protect them.