As Emmanuel Sunday rode his motorbike near Jos, Nigeria, Aug. 29, gunmen stopped him and asked him his religion.
The 19-year-old technical school student saw a group of people the gunmen had ordered out of a mini-bus; the Christians had been told to lie on the ground.
“The gunmen asked me about my religion, and when I told them I was a Christian, they asked me to join a group of people already ordered to lie down by the side of the road,” Sunday told Morning Star News. “I did as I was ordered to do, and then one of the men came and searched me and took money from me, including my mobile phone.
“It was when the gunmen started shooting and killing those of us that were Christians grouped together that I ran into a nearby maize farm, because it was already dark,” he said. “They shot wildly at me, but I escaped unhurt, except the injuries I sustained while running in the bush.”
Sunday ran for two hours before making his way back to his village. There he later learned that two of the five people slain were from his village. All five of those killed were from the Church of Christ in Nations congregation in Foron, whose pastor said the assailants were a combined band of ethnic Fulani herdsmen and Islamic extremist mercenaries.
Sunday said his escape was nothing short of a miracle.
“It was not my ability that made it possible for me to escape, but it was God that made me escape to be alive,” he said.
(RNS)
Share with others: