Slaughtered for his faith

Emmanuel Ndah, a native of Kogi State, has every cause to thank God. He narrowly escaped death in the hands of his abductors who captured him and another man of God in Maiduguri during the Boko Haram crisis.
Ndah’s escape was, indeed, very narrow because his companion, Rev George Orji, did not come out alive from that evil enclave.

Ndah lives to reveal the horrendous activities of the Boko Haram sect and the inhuman treatment they meted to both Christians and Muslims alike.
An elder with Goodnews of Christ Church International in Maiduguri, Ndah, is married, has a child and has lived in Maiduguri for 15 years. He was the one driving the late Rev. George Orji of Goodnews Church before they were both abducted by members of the infamous Boko Haram sect. They had unwittingly driven themselves to the evil enclave of the Boko Haram members. There, they were arrested, tortured and asked to denounce Christ and their Christian faith. But they refused. Somehow, Ndah managed to escape from the Boko Haram camp, but Pastor Orji wasn’t that lucky. He was stabbed in the back and left to bleed to death. Here, Ndah recounts how Pastor Orji met his untimely end.

Tension
The whole trouble, Ndah recalled, started on Sunday, July 26. “That Sunday morning, there was tension in some Northern states as the Boko Haram violence spread. We couldn’t attend church service since the place was tense.”
According to Ndah, who lived close to the sect’s headquarters, he started seeing strange people in the area the following day. “My house is just about half a kilometre to the place the group used as their headquarters,” he said. “This happened around evening. When we saw them, we panicked because they hid their faces. It was just their two eyeballs that we could see. We tried to inform our people that this was what was happening around us.”

According to him, in the past when such a thing happened, he would make frantic phone calls to the Commissioner of Police and the response was usually immediate. But in this case, he made no calls. “The excuse given by the people around was that the strange group wanted to hold a programme before their Sallah began,” he said. “We were also told that they were angry because government refused to give them permission to hold the programme.”

Boko Haram
“Actually, I didn’t even know this title, Boko Haram, until the day I escaped,” he said. “But I used to know their leader, Mohammed Yusuf. Morikaz is what they call the avenue where they held their meetings. That is their headquarters.”

Terrible Tuesday
On that fateful Tuesday, Pastor Orji and Ndah went to town after breakfast and returned after they had discovered that everywhere was calm. Later in the day, they had to go to town again because Pastor Orji needed to get some things for his children.
“I was the one driving,” Ndah recalled. “When we reached the State Low Cost Housing area, we entered and there was no problem. On getting inside the area, we found out that there were some strange people there. You know when you are driving, you can have a better view of your environment. I told him that I was very suspicious and that the fanatics might be around. I suggested that we should go back.”

According to him, the pastor didn’t argue. But as he reversed, Pastor Orji reportedly suggested that they should check on one of their members. That, sadly, was their undoing.
Ndah continued: “I didn’t even turn; I just reversed the car. There was one of our church members living close by. The pastor said we should drive to her place since the surroundings were no longer safe. We came down from the car and moved to the woman’s place. He asked me to lock the car but I said ‘no’ since we might need to run back. On reaching the woman’s house, we found out that the door was locked. We knocked again; no response. So, we decided to go back to the car.”

Their arrest
As they headed back to the car, Ndah said they saw two men approaching them. “We were very close to them and I moved forward ahead of the pastor. They asked where we were coming from. They said, are you CID or policemen? I said no, I am a businessman. Then, they asked Pastor Orji and he said he was a pastor. Immediately he said so, their countenance changed.”
“While this was going on, I tried to see what one of the men was holding because his hand was behind him. I realised that he was holding a short knife. The other one had a long knife inside his long robe. Left for me alone, I would have said, let’s try and overpower them since they are two and we are two. But I know my pastor, he would not fight. I also thought if I should struggle with the first one, the second one would get me. So, I held my peace and we were arrested.

“None of them knew how to drive the car. They asked me to enter and drive. I entered the car and I could have escaped. But how could I when the pastor was still outside the car with them? I couldn’t leave him behind. So, I told them to allow him to come in. One said they should walk, but I insisted they should go with the car with the intention that once the pastor entered, I would drive off.”
Ndah said that the two other men boarded the vehicle with the pastor. He said that while one man put a knife to his neck, the other did the same thing to the pastor. “If you make any move, we will cut off your neck,” their abductors reportedly said.

“Then, I had one option because I was the one holding the steering wheel. I could run the car and crash it on the wall and kill them there. I spoke to pastor but he said I shouldn’t do that. ‘Let’s go. If we are to die let’s die for Christ. Don’t just kill all of us like that.’ I agreed and so we moved on.”
On their way, they met more sect members. “Again, they came to us. There was one holding a gun. He boarded the car, while others continued holding our necks. At this time, we were no longer scared. I asked the pastor again, what do we do? Should I do anything I could with the car? He said ‘no, let’s go’. When I was still planing on what to do, we saw another group again. T his time around, I knew there was no longer a way out. I tried to manouvre the car. Even before I could do that, they stopped me, pushed me to the side and another person boarded to drive.”

Boko Haram camp
That was how they were driven to the enemy’s camp. On getting there, they were immediately ordered to lie flat on ground.
Ndah spoke further: “They tied our legs and hands and made us lie on ground and face the sun. There was a little boy next to me. Then the pastor gave me the last message. He said where we were about going was heaven. He said: ‘If they gave you anything to drink, don’t drink. If they gave you anything to eat, don’t eat. If it is hunger, let’s die here in the sun. if it is thirst, let’s die here in the sun. if they asked you to change anything concerning your faith, don’t agree. Let’s die for Jesus.’ He repeated this three times. He then said, if he died and I live, I should take the message to his family. He said if I died and he lived, he would take the message to my family that this is the cause that he died for, that he died for the sake of Christ. And if all of us died in this situation, then to God be the glory.”

According to Ndah, he was soon separated from Pastor Orji. He explained how it happened. “When the soldiers were firing bullets towards us, the people asked us to move inside. Because I was still lying down, while Pastor and others managed to move inside. They then bent down and cut the rope on my leg and hands to enable me move. By then, I couldn’t go too close to where the pastor was again.
“Later on, we were asked to lie down to avoid being shot by the soldiers. That was how we managed at that time to be alive for a moment. People were still coming in and we were forced to look at the dead bodies around.

They paraded us before Yusuf, their leader, where he sat like a king. We were asked to denounce Christ. One of them hit me and I fell. Then Yusuf looked into my eyes and asked if I was ready to accept Islam. They did the same thing to pastor and others. But we refused. Those who had agreed to accept Islam were later asked to go over to one side. The compound is very big. There they were also teaching some people how to pray and recite the Koran. Inside there, we had more than 200 Christians and many of them recited the Koran in my presence.
“It was at that point that I lost control of my mind. I think I was in a coma. The agony of me knowing that my end was near was not easy for me. I later recovered and I continued watching the unfolding scenario.

“Many of those who prayed with them that evening were later freed. They prayed and left around 5.00pm. Then, those of us that refused to accept Islam were tortured. They brought another group of people to join us. Before then, some of the people who prayed were still slaughtered outside. Some of them were hit by bullets. Corpses were everywhere. They asked us not to look at them but to look at the wall. But truly, I saw it all. Some of the men were terrifying. They were people whose faces you wouldn’t want to look at for a second time. Even those that handled us, I didn’t like to look at their faces because they were so horrible you would be afraid of them even if they didn’t hurt you in any way.”

Escape
It was in the evening that God made a way of escape for Ndah. “ I could only determine the time based on the weather because they took our phones, money and everything that we had on us. That was the first thing they did immediately after our arrest. So, I think it was about 7.00 p.m and the shooting was still on. They kept asking us to lie down, so that the bullets would not get to us. Afterwards, when they realised that the firing was getting closer and more severe, they decided to confront the soldiers. They took their sophisticated weapons and moved out. Mohammed Yusuf then put on the microphone and called on his people to come forward that the enemies were advancing. It was then that people started running in. At that point, the members of the sect went and confronted the soldiers, chanting Allahu Akbar. As this was going on, those people they brought that evening started running out and that was how I found myself outside.

“Everybody, including members of the pastor’s group, ran and one wouldn’t know who was who. As we attempted to escape, some of their men armed with knives came out of the State Low Cost Housing Estate and were shouting. Some of us managed to escape and I know some didn’t. In fact, I wasn’t feeling fine before then and I don’t know how I ran. I didn’t know if my feet touched the ground. God gave me the strength. The first few houses we entered, they drove us out. Thank God for one boy, he asked us to come in and hide. He was the one that took me in.”

Stabbed in the back
Ndah who is still traumatized by his experience said Pastor Orji was tortured and stabbed at the back because he refused to give up on his Christian faith.
According to Ndah, Pastor Orji never denied his faith even as he was dying. As he lay dying, he uttered his final words. “Tell my people that I died well,” Orji reportedly said.

By THERESA ONWUGHALU