Like many other Christian outposts in the spiritual homeland of Nigeria's "Taliban", the Victory Baptist Church in the northern desert city of Maiduguri no longer just relies on God for protection.
A modest whitewashed spire in a skyline dominated by mosques, for the last month it has had a military guard to defend it from Boko Haram, the militant local Islamist sect blamed for a string of terror attacks nationwide in recent weeks.
The soldiers in the sandbagged machinegun nest outside the church, though, were unable save three members of the flock last week.
On Wednesday evening, three days after Boko Haram ordered all Christians to leave Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria for good, Ousman Adurkwa, a 65-year-old local trader, answered the door of his home near the church to what he thought was an after-hours customer. Instead it was two masked gunmen.
"They shot my father dead, and then came for the rest of the family," Mr Adurkwa's other son Hyeladi, 25, told The Sunday Telegraph the following day. "One chased my brother Moussa and killed him, and the other shot at me, but my mother took the bullet in the stomach instead." » | Colin Freeman, Maiduguri | Sunday, January 08, 2012
