Abstract:
Although there are several provisions within the Nigerian legal framework that, however,
address the issue of church attack, the state capacity to implement effective constitutional
sanctioning on perpetrators of this heinous crime has always been found wanting or completely
absent, leading to countless religious attacks on churches with seeming state consent. This
study employs semi-structured interviews to draw data from affected families from Benue and
Enugu States, Nigeria. The article explored their experiences. The study participants were
recruited through snowball sampling technique, and data were analysed thematically. The
respondents stated that church killings or killing of Christians is rising because of the fact that
perpetrators stand lower risk of detection and apprehension than other crimes. Also
respondents interrogated that justification for the crime is land acquisition and religious
intolerance. On the persistence of the challenge, all the 13 respondents stated that the crime
seems to have state approval that has made it seemly impossible to tackle. The article calls for
continuous inter-religious dialogue and intentional governmental responsibility in protecting
lives of all persons living within the geographical enclave of Nigeria which is necessary for the
common good. Closer understanding of other faiths and religions will help build bridges of
peace and tolerance. The article also calls for the need to promote African traditional values,
such as the value of sacredness of life, human respect and good neighbourliness.
CONTRIBUTION : This study initiated the discussions that will help the public understand the
reason for continuous church attacks in Nigeria, what church crime connotes in the Nigerian
context and its uniqueness from other crimes. These discussions sit quite well within the
transdisciplinary religious perspective of this journal.
