AP

Nigerian Christian leaders around the globe have called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague to act now against the “pernicious genocide” in northern Nigeria.

The Southern Kaduna People’s Union (SOKAPU) letter to the chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, opened by commending ICC’s role in the capture and potential extradition of the genocidal despot Al Bashir, Sudan’s popularly-deposed president. But the church leaders go on to boldly flag that the ICC is failing Nigeria by not acting against the blatant genocidal persecution now unfolding in the north, as ongoing atrocities perpetrated by Fulani militants, Boko Haram and other murderous extremists mount day on day.

As a Nigerian church leader recently told Barnabas after the massacre of 21 believers at a wedding, “it is as if the lives of Christians no longer matter”.

Our news desk has been swamped by such stories for many months, yet this relentless and bloody toll of Christian lives is disturbingly absent from wider mainstream media.

A gathering of hundreds of Christians, dressed in black, protested on Sunday, 2 August against the slaughter and called on Buhari’s government to “rise to their responsibility” in Nigeria’s Kaduna State also seemed to go unnoticed by the world.

Barnabas Fund