Islamic militants have beheaded a pastor in Nigeria just days after releasing a ransom video of his pleas for help.
Rev. Lawan Andimi, head of the Christian Association in Nigeria’s chapter in his home region, was abducted by the Islamic militant group Boko Haram last month during a raid in the Adamawa state of Nigeria.
Days after he was kidnapped, his captors released a video in which Andimi asked his colleagues to call on Gov. Ahmandu Umaru Fintiri to secure his release.
“I have never been discouraged because of all conditions that one finds himself in is in the hand of God,” Andimi said in the video.
“By the grace of God, I will be together with my wife and my children and all my colleagues,” Andimi went on to say. “If the opportunity has not been granted, maybe it is the will of God.”
“Don’t cry, don’t worry, but thank God for everything,” he said.
According to Christian Post, on Monday, local sources disclosed that Andimi was murdered and his family notified by the CAN office in the Adamawa state.
“They have slaughtered him in Sambisa forest,” an unnamed source told Save the Persecuted Christians, according to the nonprofit’s Executive Director Dede Laugesen. “They murdered him because he refused to renounce his faith. And because they couldn’t raise the money for his ransom.”
Christian Post said the source revealed Andimi’s captors demanded €2 million in exchange for his release, however, the church community was only able to raise €4,969.88.
Remarkably, Snopes jumped on the article and decided to “fact-check” Christian Post’s report on Andimi’s execution. The “fact-checking” looney left-wing website admitted that while the pastor was indeed beheaded after being abducted and held for ransom, they could obtain no evidence corroborating the claim that Andimi was executed for his faith.
“It would be appropriate that such a source, in those circumstances, should remain anonymous, in the interests of his personal safety,” Snopes said. “However, because we cannot contact the source directly, we cannot obtain from him any evidence to corroborate the claim that the pastor was ordered to renounce his faith, refused to do so and was executed in part as a result of that refusal.”
Snopes went on to say the claim that the pastor was executed for his Christian faith is “not a trivial detail,” because “it sharpens the focus on the religious dynamics at play in his abduction… and tends to advance a narrative that frames the ongoing violence and conflict in Nigeria as primarily, or exclusively, a religious one.”
Despite admitting “Boko Haram’s campaign of terror and violence in Nigeria has firm religious dimensions to it and involves strong religious motivations,” Snopes went on to demonstrate their utter ignorance of Islam by suggesting the group’s “activities” aren’t just religiously driven.
According to Snopes, the group’s motives also involve “economic, political, and ethnic divisions,” however, anyone even slightly familiar with Islam would understand the religion is as much political as it is theological, if not, more so!
In December last year, a report by the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART) revealed that more than 1,000 Christians in Nigeria had been slaughtered by Islamic militants during the previous 12 months.
The report entitled Your Land or Your Blood, also found more than 6,000 believers were murdered in the region in the last four years.
Meanwhile, Open Doors has listed Nigeria as one of the most violent countries for Christians in the world, accounting for 90% of Christian deaths in the 2019 World Watch List reporting period.
