Silent night in Eruku

Hovering bandits, lingering trauma, and a military presence stole the Christmas spirit.

Sogo Oladele in Kwara State

All phptos: Sogo Oladele

The night before Christmas was indeed a silent one in Eruku. As other parts of Nigeria enjoyed Christmas Eve service and Detty December concerts, the town lay under a heavy quiet, broken only by hushed conversation and the occasional moving vehicle. Military checkpoints stood only a few metres apart. Eruku was also literally dark: PHCN, the company behind Nigeria’s erratic power supply, had failed again. Solar-powered bulbs and rechargeable lamps lit up the night in small pockets. With festivities cancelled and fireworks banned, residents huddled indoors, reminiscing about simpler times.

Eruku made international news when a group of armed bandits stormed a livestreamed service on 18 November, killing two people and abducting 38.

Praying alive: Congregants worship at Christ Apostolic Church Oke Isegun in Eruku, northern Nigeria.

The footage became an online poster for the “Christian genocide” narrative floated by United States President Donald Trump earlier that month.

The abducted worshippers were released a few days later after government intervention. The Kwara State government housed them for a week and provided immediate medical assistance, but no psychological or other medical support followed, even though many of them were still traumatised or in pain.

Funlayo Joshua, a trader, said the captors beat her. A month after her government-funded hospital stay, she was still suffering from headaches and dizziness. She fainted shortly after the rescue and remained unconscious for three days.

Sanctuary: Grace Ige (L), one of the 38 people that were abducted during the attack, attends a service at CAC Oke Isegun. Grace had been part of the first group that were abducted on their way back from a wedding ceremony. They were on their way back from her son’s wedding.

The attack took place during a seven-day programme by the Christ Apostolic Church to thank God that some of its members had survived another abduction a month earlier. In October, bandits had attacked a bus of people returning to Eruku from a wedding ceremony, 18 of whom were church members. Local hunters responded but the bandits managed to whisk two children away. Both were rescued – one by the army and the second after a clandestine ransom payment of 4-million naira ($2,800).

Grace Ige, a caterer, was a victim of both attacks. The October wedding was her son’s and the two children abducted then were hers too. She borrowed to raise the ransom and remains in debt.

Since the attack, church gatherings have been limited to brief services held under strict military presence. When the Christmas service started at 8am, fewer than 10 people were present in a church that often had more than 160 worshippers. Church leaders now send canvassers to people’s homes, to let them know the service has begun. Even so, they are happy to get a crowd of 50. In the end, about 60 people turned up for the Christmas service. Only four of them had been among the 38 abducted the previous month.

Welcome, ye faithful: Elder Michael Agbabiaka leads a worship session as Pastor Lawrence Bamidele and members of the church dance at the Christmas service at CAC Oke Isegun on 25 December.

A town of migrants

Geographically, Eruku is in the north of Nigeria – but its people speak Yoruba, a language typically spoken in the south.

Attacks by Boko Haram and other groups have driven some Hausa and Fulani people into the town over the past decade, many from Nigeria’s northeast and some from as far away as Togo.

Well before the livestreamed attack – in which the bandits are seen gathering up worshippers’ handbags – banditry had been hollowing out life in and around Eruku.

Farmers on the outskirts were attacked and forced to abandon their land. Then, the bandits turned toward the town itself. This left many of Eruku’s recent migrants feeling that death and crisis follow them like a bad odour.

Some of them even started heading back home, given what they ran from had followed them.

Nigerians online – particularly in the south – tend to hold a thinly veiled hostility towards Hausa and Fulani people. Most violent attacks occur in the northern states they traditionally called home and some people in the south blame northerners – as groups – for Nigeria’s perennial insecurity.

Back from the brink: Felicia Ige was also among the congregants who were abducted. She says the bandits made them walk such a long distance that her walking is now impaired, and she has been in the grip of constant anxiety ever since their release.

In Eruku, however, this hostility seems almost non-existent. Elder Agbabiaka, the church secretary, explained that people understand the bandits are a minority, who do not represent a religion or an ethnic group. He said that before the attack on the church, the bandits had been wreaking havoc on farmers in the bush and a lot of the victims were Hausa, Fulani, or Muslim.

Life in Eruku goes on with bated breath. The Nigerian government says normality has been restored, but the residents would not call the heavy presence of soldiers normal. Even with the militarisation of their town, they still cannot venture into their farms. The soldiers patrol the town; the bandits remain in the surrounding forests.