By TruthNigeria Correspondents
(Kaduna) – Christians who coexist with Muslims in Kano State are denied access to their churches and endure severe suppression, TruthNigeria has learned.
Kano lies in area that has been dominated by Muslims for at least five centuries in Northwest Nigeria
A 2023 study by Naira forum gave the Muslim/Christian percentage as below:
Kano State: 25 percent; Christians; 75 percent Muslims
Rev. David Ayuba Azzaman, Assistant General Overseer of Family Worship Centre in Kaduna, known for his fiery defense of persecuted Christians in Northern Nigeria, told TruthNigeria in Kaduna August 10 that the suppression of religious freedom in Northern Nigeria appears most worrisome in Kano state.
He gave a grim account of a recent evangelical visit to a tertiary school – Federal College of Education (FEC) – in Kano State.
Young Christians Show Resilience Despite Hostility
“I was received at the gate of the school by select officials of all the Christian groups in the school who have been yearning for my presence,” he said.
“As we were going to where the group was supposed to have been seated, I counted four well-built mosques elaborately decorated. They were blaring Islamic sermons from all of them,” he noted.
“My expectation was that the young Christian students eager for the words of Christ, would take me to a chapel or a school auditorium if the crowd was large; or at worst a class room if they weren’t that much,” he said.
According to him, they walked past all the buildings before he sighted a motley crowd far off, singing Christian worship songs on what looked like a football pitch.
“I was told that since the establishment of the School in 1965, no church structure or any edifice was allowed for Christians to worship. Not even a classroom!” he emphasized.
Rev Azzaman said that despite that, he met the young congregation in high spirits and that they were in their thousands.
“The Christian students were forced to gather on a muddy, filthy football pitch, littered with goat feces, to worship,” Azzaman told said.
“I couldn’t be prouder of these brethren as they showed resilience in spirit and sang their hearts to the glory of Christ with the chants of ‘Halleluiah!!’ echoing and revibrating all over the school,” he said.
This may have incensed some Muslims, because soon the volume of the Muslim sermons from the speakers became so heightened, it appeared to be an attempt to drown the songs of the young Christians, he said.
“Cars were passing by, and goats and sheep could stroll into the pitch as we prayed,” he added.
Not a single Church in all public Schools
“But to the glory of God, we ended successfully and dispersed with abundant blessings,” he said
According to him, he was informed that even in the Bayero University Kano (BUK) there is not a single chapel or church even as a Federal Government owned my Institution and that it was so for all government-owned schools in the state.
The oppression of Christians in Kano state is not limited to schools only, Azzaman added.
“In Kumbotso County, where indigenous Christians are the majority, they still face suppression,” he said.
Christians forced out of worship places
“Before 2019, in Kumbotso City there were churches Christians could easily access for worship. However, after a religious crisis in 2019, the county authority banned all Christian worship centers in the city center and surroundings,” he said.
“The Christians then begged the police authority to allocate spaces for them to erect temporary structures and worship. And the police gave them,” he said.
Somehow, the county authority picked issues with the police over its magnanimity to the Christians, and the police bowed to pressure and told the Christians to leave, he said.
However, the Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Kano State Chapter, Rev Joseph Waney, told TruthNigeria that the churches owned by the Nigerian Police in Kumbotso are still standing, only the ones erected by the indigenous Christians were affected.
“Most of the Christians from Kumbotso have to find their ways to Sabon Gari – an old suburb of Kano city reserved for non-Muslims that were working for the colonialists since the early ‘20s.
“This situation has caused a lot of untold hardship and inconvenience to the Christians there,” he said, highlighting the pathetic conditions they endure to practice their faith. The absence of churches in the city center has created a sense of isolation and marginalization oppression.
New building plans must not capture Churches
Pastor Bitrus Yohanna of HEKAN Church, Sabon Gari, Kano, corroborated Azzaman’s assertion.
“In Kumbotso and other counties in Kano State, Christians are not permitted to erect or build churches except in Sabon Gari.
“If you want to buy land, you must agree to a clause that you will not turn your building into a place of Christian worship.
“Furthermore, existing churches are being demolished by the Kano state government on flimsy excuses,” Yohanna noted.
Kano State Has History of Church Demolitions
20 Churches demolished in 2001
Kano State has a troubling record of church demolitions, with religious clerics highlighting the state government’s history of intolerance towards Christians and their places of worship.
Pastor Gabriel Damina, an indigenous Christian who pastors at Living Faith Chapel, Sabon Gari, Kano recalled a disturbing incident in 2001 where the state government demolished approximately 20 churches in Sabon Gari without providing valid reasons.
“This unfortunate event is part of a larger pattern of discrimination and persecution faced by Christians in Kano State,” Pastor Damina noted.
“How can a state government demolish 20 churches in less than a week? he queried.
That grim attack on Christian faith in Kano state is well documented already.
Though Nigeria is constitutionally a secular state, majority-Muslim states of Northern Nigeria, including Kano state, have managed to use their various states parliaments to make laws allowing the implementation of Sharia law between 1999 and 2000.
