Northern Christian Leaders Tell Members to Defend Themselves as Fresh Attacks Deepening Easter Fear

Northern Christian Leaders Tell Members to Defend Themselves as Fresh Attacks Deepening Easter Fear

Northern Christian leaders have publicly urged believers to take proactive steps to defend themselves and their communities against persistent attacks, in one of the sharpest statements yet from a major Christian body in the region as fresh killings in Plateau and Kaduna cast a shadow over Easter. The call, attributed in multiple reports to the northern leadership traditionally associated with the Christian Association of Nigeria but now operating under the Forum of Northern Christians, followed renewed violence during Holy Week and came with a broader demand for stronger state protection and justice for victims. 

The statement was signed by Rev. Joseph John Hayab and Bishop Mohammed Naga, according to reports on Friday, and framed the current security situation as intolerable for Christian communities across the North. The leaders said attacks on innocent communities, particularly during sacred Christian observances, had become too frequent and too devastating to ignore. In the version of the message carried by Punch and other Nigerian outlets, the northern Christian body said members should not yield to fear or intimidation and should organise to protect themselves while remaining resolute in their faith. 

The immediate backdrop was the Palm Sunday attack in Angwan Rukuba in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State, where gunmen struck a Christian-majority community on the night of March 29. Casualty figures differed across early reports, but Reuters said at least 30 people were killed, while the Associated Press reported at least 20 deaths, and subsequent local reporting placed the toll in the high twenties. Plateau authorities responded by imposing a 48-hour curfew in Jos North, later easing it after what the state described as an improvement in security conditions. 

For northern Christian leaders, the significance of that attack went beyond the immediate death toll. They argued that violence timed around major religious observances sends a message of terror to vulnerable communities and deepens long-running fears among worshippers already living under insecurity. In public remarks quoted by Nigerian media, Hayab suggested that attacks on places of worship and Christian gatherings were designed to frighten believers into retreating from public religious life. His argument was that failing to tell communities to stand firm would amount to surrendering to intimidation. 

The statement also drew on a wider pattern of violence beyond Plateau. The northern Christian body referenced attacks in parts of Kaduna State, and the timing aligned with fresh insecurity in the state, including the abduction of seven members of one family alongside three other residents in Unguwar Sabon-Titi in Kachia Local Government Area. Earlier in January, Reuters also reported the abduction of scores of worshippers from churches in Kaduna, underscoring the degree to which attacks on Christian communities and places of worship have become part of a broader security crisis rather than isolated incidents. 

At the same time, the leaders were careful to pair their call for self-protection with an appeal to government. Their Easter message urged federal and state authorities to strengthen security architecture, ensure justice for victims and restore public confidence in the state’s ability to protect lives. The language reflected a deepening frustration that many communities feel abandoned, particularly in rural areas where attacks often unfold before security forces can intervene. Reports from Guardian, Punch and Daily Trust show the group warning that repeated assaults risk normalising violence and eroding trust in government capacity. 

President Bola Tinubu had already condemned the recent killings in Plateau and Kaduna in a statement issued on March 31, describing the attacks as barbaric and cowardly and promising that security agencies would bring the perpetrators to justice. He specifically referenced the Jos killings and the attack in Kahir village in Kagarko Local Government Area of Kaduna State. But while such condemnations are politically important, they have done little to calm communities that say official outrage has too often not translated into effective protection on the ground. 

The political and institutional context of the statement is also notable. In February, northern Christian leaders formally revived the older regional identity of the Northern Christian Association, or Forum of Northern Christians, distancing themselves in branding terms from the national CAN label while insisting they were not splitting from the wider Christian body. That means the “Northern CAN” label still used in some headlines is partly a shorthand for a leadership structure that has recently tried to reassert a more specifically northern voice. The latest Easter intervention fits that effort: it was both a security warning and a declaration that northern Christians intend to speak more forcefully for themselves. 

The call to “defend yourselves” is therefore politically explosive because it sits at the intersection of self-preservation, state failure and the danger of escalation. Nigerian law recognises self-defence in limited circumstances, but organised armed retaliation outside state control can easily worsen already fragile communal fault lines. Northern Christian leaders did not publicly lay out a blueprint for militias or offensive action. Their message, as reported, was more a cry of alarm and a call for readiness than a formal security programme. Still, in a region where vigilante structures, ethnic militias and communal reprisals have shaped previous cycles of violence, the rhetoric is likely to intensify debate over who protects vulnerable communities when the state appears unable to do so. 

What makes the statement resonate is not merely its wording but the accumulation of recent trauma behind it. Between the Jos Palm Sunday killings, attacks in Kaduna, earlier church abductions, and continuing displacement in several northern states, Christian leaders are speaking into an atmosphere already saturated with fear, grief and anger. Their message is, in essence, that prayer alone cannot be the only response to recurring bloodshed. Whether that pressure forces stronger state action or feeds a more dangerous drift toward community self-help will depend on what the government does next. For now, the Easter appeal has crystallised a stark reality in northern Nigeria: many Christian communities no longer feel merely threatened; they feel abandoned, and their leaders are beginning to speak in the language of survival. 

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Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Gabriel Osa