Christian Association Leader in Adamawa Warns of  Christian Genocide Sweep

Eight Villages Recently Burned and Erased by Boko Haram Terrorists

By Suleman Ayuba

As Northern Nigerian Senators press Abuja to mount an offensive against Boko Haram in the Sambisa Forest bordering Adamawa State, Adamawa Christian clergy say they are being wiped out. 

Islamist gunmen are emptying Christian farming villages in Hong Local Government Area of Adamawa State, local clergy tell TruthNigeria. 

The killings, abductions, and mass burials amount to a calculated campaign of genocide against indigenous Christians, 

 Families now sleep listening for the gunfire that has already wiped out neighboring settlements. Nigerian authorities, they say, have not stopped it.

The charge comes first from people on the ground. In an exclusive interview with TruthNigeria, Mbafe Manasseh, Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Hong Chapter, said the violence is not a loose security problem. He called it a deliberate effort to displace, dismantle, and erase Christian heritage from the land.

“What we are passing through is a systematic and calculated genocide against indigenous Christians,” Manasseh told TruthNigeria. “Thousands have been displaced. We have been conducting mass burials of Christians. Eight Christian communities have already been completely displaced.”

 “Our communities that are being erased are 100 percent Christian. We have lost count of loved ones lost to Boko Haram terrorists,” Rev. Manasseh said.

Those eight villages, he said, were entirely Christian before the attacks. Congregations that once gathered, and families that tilled the soil, are gone. Abandoned compounds and unmarked graves stand where they lived. Manasseh said the aim is to strip indigenous Christians of ancestral land. 

Nightfall brings no relief. Residents describe a constant dread that the next burst of gunfire will finish another village.

“The pictures of the recent mass burials you have seen are recent,” Manasseh told TruthNigeria .

The erasure of fully Christian communities in Hong is not a string of isolated incidents, CAN and EYN officials tell TruthNigeria. It is an existential crisis. Without action to secure the villages, dismantle terrorist footholds, and return the displaced to their land, they warn, these ancient Christian farming communities will be extinguished under unchecked terror.

Threat Continues

A second exclusive interview puts a survivor’s voice at the center of the same claim. Tabitha Yusuf, a young woman who lived through the  massacres, told TruthNigeria that civilians are the target and that faith is the line the attackers use.

“Neither women nor children are spared,” she said. “They kill the men and kidnap the women for sex slavery. Our only offense is that we are Christians.”They came in the night and killed dozens of Christians on 1^st October and now even on following days.  The Boko Haram terrorists have not stopped; they are still coordinating the attacks and killing of Christians,” Yusuf told TruthNigeria.

She described sudden incursions, burned homes, selective killing, and abduction. Men are shot. Women are taken. The pattern, she said, is repeated across Hong county (Local Governance Area) hamlets. For young women in rural Adamawa, captivity is now part of daily fear. Church officials say murder and abduction together are tearing apart the social fabric of indigenous Christian communities.

 TruthNigeria reported a rising wave of attacks in Adamawa since January in its August 20th post.  

• January: Boko Haram attacked Mubang and Zar in Hong LGA.
• January: Suspected fighters struck Kirchinga in Madagali LGA.
• February: Twin attacks killed 25 people in Shuwari and Kirchinga.
• February: Guyaku and Telabala in Gombi LGA suffered attacks that killed 29 people; ISWAP claimed responsibility.
• February: Military reported killing 30 terrorists in operations targeting Boko Haram, ISWAP, and JAS elements.

But the threat is ongoing. On Friday, September 18, 2026, leaders of Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN), the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, paid a condolence visit to Dzangola Kilba in Hong Local Government Area after an assault attributed to Boko Haram insurgents. Thirteen people were killed. Homes were burned. The community was left burying its dead. 

EYN leaders have been saying for months that the same campaign is grinding down the church across southern Borno State and Adamawa States. The EYN General Church Council, held at the church headquarters in late March gathered in mourning as well as prayer.

Most Rev. Panti Musa, Archbishop of the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria (LCCN), attended the clergy convention in March and expressed sympathy for EYN’s shattered congregations. Musa acknowledged the price members continue to pay for keeping a Christian presence in insurgency-hit districts of southern Borno and Adamawa. He prayed for the bereaved and urged the Federal Government to deploy decisive measures to arrest the destruction. 

EYN President Rev. Daniel Mbaya then set out the scale of the loss. “Over 700,000 members are displaced, and about 25,000 are currently taking refuge in the Cameroon and Chad Republics,” he said. Church leaders confirmed that about 300 of 586 churches have been destroyed by fire, and that an uncountable number of members’ houses have been looted and  burned by Islamists.

In the same address, Mbaya said the church is Nigeria’s worst hit by insurgency and that the losses are still rising. “At the end of 2025, we had 70 local church councils (branch churches) displaced, according to the Daily Post. 

He added: “The continued unreported and underreported attacks on our communities, displacement of our churches and abduction of members is worrisome.” He said members have been killed or abducted, and he asked the government and other groups to act together. 

Local leaders say the gap is government failure. Attacks run for hours. Mass burials follow. Displaced thousands sit in makeshift camps or cross into Chad and Cameroon, and security forces do not hold the villages. Manasseh and Yusuf both tie the violence to the victims’ identity as indigenous Christians. EYN’s own figures—from emptied councils in Gwoza to dozens of branches displaced between 2024 and 2025—show a church losing ground while Abuja and state authorities issue no decisive rescue of the settlements.

Suleman Ayuba is a conflict reporter for TruthNigeria.

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