This is your ICR update.
Bright eyes and a contented smile reach out to the camera from her young and carefree brown-skinned face - her family and neighbors can’t believe that one so full of life is now gone.
Deborah Emmanuel Yakubu was a Christian student stoned to death at a college in northwest Nigeria last month. She had been falsely accused of blaspheming the prophet of Islam by a Muslim man she had refuse to date.
Morningstar News reports that Miss Yakubu, a 200-level student at Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto State’s capital city, was beaten, stoned to death and her body set on fire, according to area residents.
A video showing the attack reportedly appeared on social media that very same day.
In the video, a man is seen raging in the Hausa language that he killed Yakubu and set her body on fire.
Sister Yakubu, a member of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), complained in a class WhatsApp group-chat against how the institution discriminated against Christians in the school regarding assignments and testing, in favor of the Muslim students. Morningstar News gathered from local testimony that this was used to say she insulted Muhammad. Witnesses say she did not insult Islam, and it was eventually discovered that she had turned down a Muslim man’s request to date her which led to the blasphemy accusation.
Following the arrest of two suspects, Muslim rioters started fires and damaged the Holy Family Catholic Cathedral, St. Kevin’s Catholic Church and an ECWA church building in Sokoto.
In addition to the damaged churches, dozens of shops in Sokoto belonging to Christians were looted and then destroyed by rioters.
The leader of Muslims in Nigeria, the Sultan of Sokoto, issued a statement condemning the killing.
Meanwhile, leaders of the Hausa Christian Foundation (HACFO), a ministry among the Hausa people of northern Nigeria, noted that Yakubu was the leader of the campus Christian fellowship’s female students. The Foundation issued a statement of their own, asking us to “Pray for Yakubu’s family and the Fellowship of Christian Students (FCS), ask God to intervene in security of other lives of Christians on the campus and in the city, which is the Islamic headquarters of Nigeria where the Sultan is based.”
In the 2022 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian, Nigeria jumped to seventh place, its highest ranking ever, from No. 9 the previous year.
This has been an International Christian Response Update. To learn more about the work of ICR, visit christianreponse.org. As always, thanks for sharing, thanks for praying, and thank you for caring.
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