Fulani herdsmen last month killed a pastor, his daughter and her husband, leaving the couple’s 3-month-old baby with a machete wound, in Plateau state, Nigeria.
The Christian family was ambushed as they traveled on the Jos-Barkin Ladi highway to a village in Barkin Ladi County on Jan. 16, the Evangelical Missionary Society (EMS) of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) said in an announcement.
The Rev. Bulus Madaki, an EMS employee, his daughter and son-in-law were slain within the attack, while the granddaughter suffered a machete cut on the pinnacle and was left to die but survived.
“In Nigeria, the gospel is usually preached at the associated fee of blood and tears, the blood and tears of missionaries who decide to follow Christ regardless of the worth,” the EMS leaders stated.
Pastor Madaki had served at Janta 2 Mission Station in Zagun District Church Council (DCC) and was recently transferred to Gwol DCC; he was killed along the Kassa-Nding Bridge in Barkin Ladi County, they said.
“He was killed alongside his married daughter and son-in-law by killer Fulani herdsmen. They were on their approach to his latest mission station. They never arrived,” the leaders stated. “His granddaughter, a 3-month-old baby girl, survived the attack with a severe head injury. She now lives as an orphan, having lost her father, her mother, and her grandfather in a single, violent moment.”
The attack marks the tough reality of missions in Nigeria, they stated.
“Missions in Nigeria is growing, however the danger that comes with it’s each real, brutal and enduring,” they stated. “In spite of this attack, it’s a sure evidence that we’re winning and souls are being won to Christ through a tumultuous period.”
ECWA members told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News that persecution of Christians will proceed to function a catalyst to the spread of the gospel.
“We pray to do more, persecution won’t ever end and so also evangelism won’t ever end,” said ECWA member Cletus Ali. “We pray for them [terrorists] and consider they may in the future receive salvation and turn out to be a part of us.”
Ayoola Abejide, one other ECWA member, asked God to provide grace for gospel proclamation despite persecution and death.
“May God intervene and likewise bring vengeance upon the enemies of the gospel and provides us rest,” Abejide said. “No retreat, no give up. Nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ. May God comfort the church and all the family.”
ECWA member Lydia Mark said God speaks in all situations.
“He is speaking even without delay concerning this present situation,” Mark said. “May God grant us the needed grace to consider even after we don’t loudly hear Him as He speaks in Jesus’ name. Divine comfort we pray.”
More Christians were killed in Nigeria than in another country from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025, in response to Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List. Of the 4,849 Christians killed worldwide for his or her faith during that period, 3,490 – 72 percent – were Nigerians, a rise from 3,100 the prior 12 months. Nigeria ranked No. 7 on the WWL list of the 50 countries where it’s most difficult to be a Christian.
Numbering within the hundreds of thousands across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise a whole lot of clans of many various lineages who don’t hold extremist views, but some Fulani do adhere to radical Islamist ideology, the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG) noted in a 2020 report.
“They adopt a comparable technique to Boko Haram and ISWAP and display a transparent intent to focus on Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.
Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they consider herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam as desertification has made it difficult for them to sustain their herds.
In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they’re within the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many a whole lot, Christians above all, in response to the report. Jihadist groups comparable to Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), amongst others, are also energetic within the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities proceed to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, in response to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent times.
The violence has spread to southern states, and a latest jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged within the northwest, armed with advanced weaponry and a radical Islamist agenda, the WWL noted. Lakurawa is affiliated with the expansionist Al-Qaeda insurgency Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, originating in Mali.
Nigeria ranked seventh on the 2026 WWL list of the 50 countries where it’s most difficult to be a Christian.
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