YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – In yet another case of worsening insecurity in Nigeria, a Catholic priest in Anambra State has been shot dead.
Father Tobias Chukwujekwu Okonkwo was shot dead Dec. 26 by unidentified assailants at lhiala, according to the chancellor of the diocese, Father Raphael Ezeogu.
“As the Catholic community mourns the loss of this dedicated priest, they take comfort in the statement: ‘Where sorrow increases, divine consolation increases all the more’,” Ezeogu said in his December 27 statement.
“The Catholic Diocese of Nnewi has called on the faithful to offer prayers and Holy Masses for the eternal rest of Fr. Tobias and to console his bereaved family,” he said.
The murdered priest was a pharmacist who worked in several institutions, including manager of the respective Schools of Nursing, Midwifery, and Medical Laboratory at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Ihiala.
“We solicit your prayers and Holy Masses for his eternal joy,” the chancellor said. The news of the priest’s death has sparked strong reactions among Facebook followers of the Nnewi Diocese.
Ifyben Esione said he was “speechless.”
“Oh nooo why him, very gentle and good priest of God. He lived in my house as a seminarian at my Parish on one of his apostolic work days. Too hard for me to write ‘Rest in peace my Son @ Fr. Ozo,” Esione wrote.
Ifeanyi Okonkwo simply wished the priest “eternal rest” and Ezeani Sunday said he was extending “sincere condolences to his family members and the entire diocese of Nnewi.”
“This is shocking and very painful. May his soul rest in peace,” wrote Kingsley Okoye.
Born in August 1984, Okonkwo was ordained as a priest in July of 2015. His killing highlights the worsening security problems in Africa’s most populated country, with an estimated 205 million people. And very often, Christians are the target. In November, armed gangs locally known as “bandits” kidnapped — and released — three Catholic priests.
Comprehensive data is hard to come by, but according to the Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, 21 Catholic priests were kidnapped in Nigeria between September 2022 and August 2023.
The latest killing comes just days after the Catholic–inspired NGO International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) published yet another report that represents “a graphic, shocking and chilling account” of the gross human rights violations committed by the Nigerian armed forces as well as non-state actors in eastern Nigeria dating back to 2015.
Titled “Ocean of Innocent Blood Flowing in the East,” the report exposes both external and internal forces found to have been responsible “for the present war-zone situation of the South-East and the South-South regions of Eastern Nigeria.”
The report accuses the Nigeria armed forces and killer vigilante organizations of killing 32,300 unarmed civilians in Southeastern Nigeria in the past nine years.
The December 22 report also slams government-linked and non-government-linked armed criminal entities of killing over 14,500 “defenseless citizens” within the same period of August 2015 to December 2024.
The report talks about “grisly and egregious human rights violations and abuses: Mass and targeted killings and property burnings outside the law, body lacerations, abductions, disappearances, torture and other inhuman or degrading treatments or punishments and security sector duty-post corruption particularly military, police and paramilitary roadblock and barracks extortions and other atrocities by armed non-state actors.”
The report further accuses the Nigerian armed forces of involvement in “false labeling, ethno- religious profiling, class stigmatization, mass criminalization, hearsay conclusions, discriminatory law enforcements, criminalization of civil wrongs/civil conducts, recriminalization and conversion of simple offenses and misdemeanors into violent offenses of ‘terrorism’, ‘insurgency’, ‘insurrection’, ‘treason’ and ‘treasonable felonies’, often using ‘IPOB/ESN/Biafra Terrorism’ as a pretext.”
All of this, the report says, has resulted in the killing of thousands of defenseless citizens, the imprisonment of others and the destruction of their properties.
“Over 6000 blindfolded or face-bagged and bundled at late night from the east and dumped uninvestigated and untried in secret military locations and prisons in seven northern states… inclusive of thousands dumped to die or subjected to kangaroo “trials” inside Wawa army cantonment in Niger state and dozens of weekly custodial deaths,” the report states.
It notes that 6000 civilian houses were destroyed, 180,000 people displaced, and a million frightened and forced to abandon their homes and flee.
The material losses were significant, with civilian properties estimated at $290.5 million lost to military burnings and destruction. Furthermore, about $2 billion was corruptly seized and illicitly pocketed at roadblocks and other gun-points.
