‘A knife to my throat:’ Rev. Bright McTitus
By Masara Kim
Rev. Bright McTitus does not just mark September 11 as a memorial for the tragic events of 2001 in the United States. For him it is a day of profound personal gratitude for escaping martyrdom in his own home in Jos, exactly 22 years ago, on September 11, 2001. His life was nearly taken by armed men who attacked his home near Jos, Nigeria, and left him for dead, but he still stands strong.
From the small village of Mabel, 45 miles south of the city where he currently lives with his family, McTitus shared memories of the horrifying attack on a sunny afternoon, and how he miraculously survived after his throat was “slit” by the terrorists shouting “Allahu Akbar” [God is great].
McTitus, then a pastor of the Jos Anglican Communion, had just returned home at 1:30 pm local time on September 11 2001. As he opened the door to his house, exhausted from a long journey, he was confronted by a group of five armed men, one of them a Muslim neighbor he had known for years.
“I called his name ‘Ahmadu!’ and asked, ‘what is happening?’ Before I realized what was going on, he lifted a machete and hit me on the head,” said McTitus.
“I was badly injured as I attempted to block the machete with my hands,” McTitus said.
“I ran to seek cover in my bedroom, and he followed me, hitting me with the machete several times while the others looted my properties,” recalled McTitus. “When I fell to the ground, I was weak and helpless, and could not even scream. Trapping my hands behind my back with his foot, he brought out a knife and held it to my throat. That is the last thing I remember,” McTitus said to TruthNigeria.
Four days prior to the home invasion, more than 1,000 people were killed in sectarian violence rocking the Plateau State capital that started September 7 and went on for days. McTitus, who was 200 miles away in Abuja, had just returned to his house in Dilimi, a majority-Muslim Jos suburb, following reports soldiers had been deployed to protect residents.
But at the time of the attack, a team of soldiers and policemen stood guard at a checkpoint just 300 yards away, unaware of the fate that had befallen McTitus.
When his older sister, Mrs. Cecilia Ozor, whom he had phoned to announce his return, arrived 30 minutes later, McTitus was completely motionless, enmeshed in the pool of his own blood.
“I was terrified when I saw him,” said Ozor to TruthNigeria. “His neck was literally cut open with many more cuts seen all over his body – his head, his hands and legs,” said Ozor in a telephone interview.
“Whether he was dead or alive, no one knew. His body was already cold,” Ozor related.
Both McTitus and Ozor claim he was declared dead on arrival at the hospital later that day. According to them, he was found faintly breathing – three days later – on the floor of an overflowing morgue where he was deposited along with other victims of the sectarian riots. He was about to be interred in a mass burial.
TruthNigeria could not independently verify these claims. But the scars on his body suggest his survival was a miracle.
“I believe God allowed me to be alive for a reason,” he said.
Just 30 miles away on the same day of his attack, 200 residents of a Christian town southwest of the city were not so lucky.
On the evening of September 11, 2001, hundreds of terrorists armed with AK-47 rifles attacked the village of Rankum and nearby villages in Barkin Ladi County, killing close to 200 people. The terrorists, who spoke the Fulani dialect, according to witnesses, looted and set fire to houses, displacing the remaining 500 residents to this day.
The town was later renamed “Mahanga” by the terrorists who took over the town and turned it to a no-go zone for Christians, according to town leaders. Surprisingly, federal authorities and State officials did not oppose this takeover, setting a troubling precedent for similar incidents in nearby states of Kaduna, Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba, and Niger, according to Intersociety, an international crime-tracking nonprofit.
As of June, 2022, more than 1,000 communities have been annexed across Nigeria’s Middle Belt through similar attacks since 2001, as reported by Intersociety. Many of them have been renamed by the terrorists.
The newly renamed Mahanga currently serves as a staging ground for terror attacks in the Central and Northwestern regions, according to lawmakers speaking to TruthNigeria on background.
Masara Kim is an award-winning conflict reporter in Jos and senior editor of TruthNigeria.com
