Christian survivor of terrorism: ‘Pray for Boko Haram’

Vatican City, Jan 22, 2025 / 09:20 am (CNA).

A Nigerian woman whose husband was killed by Boko Haram in 2014 has asked for prayers for persecuted Christians and for the terrorist group, “that they will be saved, that Jesus will reveal himself to their heart, so that they will repent.” 

“I prayed for those that have killed my husband and said, ‘I have forgiven you from my heart. There is no problem.’ They don’t know what they are doing. They are unbelievers,” Afordia, who asked to be identified by her first name only, told CNA during an interview in Rome last week. 

Afordia traveled from her hometown of Mubi in northeast Nigeria — where extremism is concentrated — to share her testimony at a Jan. 15 presentation on worldwide Christian persecution from advocacy group Open Doors. 

The World Watch List 2025 identified Nigeria, which has been grappling with Muslim extremist violence since 2009, as one of the world’s worst countries for Christian persecution. The report found that 3,100 Christians were killed in Nigeria in 2024.

Afordia, whose husband was shot in front of her after declaring himself to be a Christian, said despite what it has cost her, she will never give up her faith in Jesus Christ. 

“What God is doing is the truth. Christianity is the truth. Christ is the only one that saves,” she told CNA. “Even if today, they will kill me, they will pierce my body, one, one, one, one, like that, I will not stop following Christ because he is the Savior of this body and the Savior of this life.” 

Afordia’s story   

Boko Haram, a Muslim extremist sect classified as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department, attacked Mubi, Nigeria, on Oct. 29, 2014. 

Afordia described the confusion that broke out in Mubi that day, as the mid-morning’s business was broken by the noise of guns and bombs, and the city’s residents rushed home from work and school. 

Afordia, who helped support her family as a community health worker and poultry farmer, and her husband, a pastor at Triumph of Faith Pentecostal Church, got in their car to search for their five children, who had gone missing in the chaos of the attack. 

That was when the couple unwittingly drove into an ambush.  

“They stopped me and my husband asked both of us to come out of the car, which we did, and the Boko Haram started asking him questions: ‘Are you a Muslim or an infidel?’ He said, ‘I am not a Muslim. I am not an infidel. I am a Christian.’ And that was how he was asked to turn to the right-hand side of the road, which he did,” Afordia recalled.

“Immediately he went and knelt down and was praying,” she said. The extremists shot her husband five times in the head as she watched. 

After killing her husband, the men turned to Afordia and asked her the same questions. “I closed my eyes. I was so afraid, scared to see how they would kill me,” she said. “I raised my two hands to the sky. I was praying in my heart, ‘Lord, receive my soul today because I will go and see you.’ So in that position I heard a shout from the other side, from the Boko Haram themselves: ‘Stop it! Who asked you to kill this woman? Leave her alone.’”

Amazingly, the attackers let Afordia leave with her car and drive away. She soon found her youngest child, a teenager at the time, and the two of them abandoned the car and escaped into the mountains. 

With help, they were eventually evacuated to the state capital, where Afordia was eventually reunited with her other four young adult children. She returned to Mubi about a month later, after the town had been liberated by the government. She explained that many of Mubi’s residents, however, never went back after the attack. 

She recovered her husband’s body, which had dried in the sun, and gave it a proper burial, but she was suffering from trauma. “I was so scattered,” she described. “Sleepless nights. I was not myself. I was just walking like a mad woman. To me, life doesn’t mean anything again.”

The Open Doors group helped Afordia receive mental health treatment in Brazil. They also provided financial assistance, since she had lost her livelihood following the attack. 

“So that was how I was able to gather myself again,” she said. “And at that time thoughts were coming to my heart to remember what Jesus taught about forgiveness. And I was able to remember, and I prayed for those that have killed my husband.”

Today, Afordia is a retired grandmother to five who continues to grow her own produce and to assist at her Presbyterian church, where she teaches the faith. 

Asking for prayers, she said it would be better to be killed than to be subjugated to the brutal torture some Christians in Nigeria and other sub-Saharan countries have experienced.  

“So, so many cruel things are happening. I want the Christians where there is less persecution to pray for Christians [in Africa] that God would deliver them, that God will see them and rescue them.”

“What gives me courage?” she said. “In the first place, Christ is the one that gives life. There is no salvation in any other except in Christ.”

“When God was creating his world, darkness covered it. And when darkness covered it in Genesis Chapter 1, God did not mind about that darkness. He continued to say let there be light, let there be this, let there be this. So this gives me courage to continue as a Christian, even though the devil is seriously attacking what God has initiated. It will not stop me from following Christ because I know that is the truth,” she affirmed. 

“Any other religion … that comes is just to oppose what God has planned for man,” Afordia added. “He planned his things in a way that man should be saved.”

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/261705/christian-survivor-of-terrorism-pray-for-boko-haram