Enters the Christian Militant Group: Christian Boko
In the early hours of the first Tuesday of the year, the 7th of January to be precise, some Christians stormed some shrines located in the Umaji community in Enugu state. In the heat of their crusade, the Christians, known by the title “The Indigenous Christians of Umuaji” wrecked havoc in the place of worship. They trespassed the land, destroyed valuable items and burnt down the shrines. Yet what was their excuse for this? No the traditional worshippers hadn’t kidnapped their children and sacrificed them, no they hadn’t gone around destroying farms, burning homes, or causing any sort of trouble to anyone’s means of livelihood. What had they done then? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The shrines were burnt all due to a ridiculous wild claim that they were somehow hindering the progress of the community.
This is not the first time Christian zealots are being accused of destroying African traditional religious shrines and artifacts, it happens
everyday. In crusades and conventions, Christians continually make it an enduring mission to destroy traditional religious shrines and relics. For example in Imo state, a sect of Christians called “The United Congress of Mbaise Christians” purportedly destroyed a 100 shrines and were even boasting about their acts, promising to destroy more. The unfortunate thing is due to the level of development in the country, these cases are hardly reported or investigated.
But the most disturbing thing to consider is that society favours these
sort of activities. In movies, which offer the best reflection of the values of society, the destruction of ATR shrines and artifacts has been
romanticized. It has become the standard of the portrayal of the climatic battle between good and evil. In both real life and fiction, the average testimony and the average plot entails someone or a group of people with some sort of problem (mostly financial and marital) seeking help from a pastor. The pastor then “reveals” to them that their problem is due to the presence of a talisman in their landlord’s compound, or a shrine in their village home. They would then retrieve the talisman or go to the shrine and destroy it. And so it is not surprising at all when these religious zealots take steps further by trespassing lands, razing down shrines and burning them to ashes. Most people support these acts, church members hail those who dare to dishonour the shrines, people in the community who hear about what was done celebrate the event, there is great joy and merriment at the
expense of the victimization of the innocent. And if so you, you reading
this are among the merry ones, if you rejoice at the perpetration of violence on the relics of the traditional religions, if you also celebrate when their shrines are burnt and antiques destroyed, then you are a BOKO CHRISTIAN!