Article By Suleman Ayuba
HONG, Nigeria — Boko Haram, a violent Islamic extremist organization responsible for severe harm and human‑rights abuses, has destroyed an EYN church — Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria — one of the country’s largest indigenous Christian denominations and carried out mass abductions across Adamawa State, in what local Christian leaders describe as a deliberate campaign to erase indigenous Christian communities.
The church destruction occurred on 8 October 2026. Local clergy told TruthNigeria that the EYN church was completely destroyed. Reverend Mannaseh Mbafe, Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Hong Local Government Chapter, confirmed the attack.
In a separate exclusive interview, Ibrahim Samuel, Liaison Media Officer for the EYN District Church Councils in Shaffa, said Boko Haram fighters also struck Zdur, near Tashan Alade, where they abducted students returning from their final exams at the College of Education Waka‑Biu. The militants also seized two cars, one tricycle, and an unspecified number of farmers from Galanduwa, he told TruthNigeria.
Samuel urged parents to contact their children to confirm their safety, noting that the exact number of abducted students and civilians remains unknown. He added that the scale of the abductions has gone largely unreported, even as Boko Haram continues taking people from farms into captivity.
Christian farmer David Isaac separately confirmed to TruthNigeria that the attack extended beyond the church: shops, chemists, and pharmacy stores were looted, and several residents remain missing, either killed or abducted.
“What we are passing through is a systematic and calculated genocide against indigenous Christians,” Manasseh told TruthNigeria. “Thousands have been displaced. We have been conducting mass burials of Christians. Eight Christian communities have already been completely displaced. Our communities that are being erased are 100 percent Christian. We have lost count of loved ones lost to Boko Haram terrorists,” Rev. Manasseh said.
Those eight villages, he said, were entirely Christian before the attacks. Congregations that once gathered, and families that tilled the soil, are gone. Abandoned compounds and unmarked graves stand where they lived. Manasseh said the aim is to strip indigenous Christians of ancestral land. Nightfall brings no relief. Residents describe a constant dread that the next burst of gunfire will finish another village.
“The pictures of the recent mass burials you have seen are recent,” Manasseh told TruthNigeria.
The erasure of fully Christian communities in Hong is not a string of isolated incidents, CAN and EYN officials tell TruthNigeria. It is an existential crisis. Without action to secure the villages, dismantle terrorist footholds, and return the displaced to their land, they warn, these ancient Christian farming communities will be extinguished under unchecked terror.
Unrelenting Assaults on Civilian Populations
A second exclusive interview puts a survivor’s voice at the center of the same claim. Tabitha Yusuf, a young woman who lived through the massacres, told TruthNigeria that civilians are the target and that faith is the line the attackers use.
“Neither women nor children are spared,” she said. “They kill the men and kidnap the women for sex slavery. Our only offense is that we are Christians. They came in the night and killed dozens of Christians on 1st October and now even on following days. The Boko Haram terrorists have not stopped; they are still coordinating the attacks and killing of Christians,” Yusuf told TruthNigeria.
She described sudden incursions, burned homes, selective killing, and abduction. Men are shot. Women are taken. The pattern, she said, is repeated across Hong county (Local Governance Area) hamlets. For young women in rural Adamawa, captivity is now part of daily fear. Church officials say murder and abduction together are tearing apart the social fabric of indigenous Christian communities.
TruthNigeria reported a rising wave of attacks in Adamawa since January in its August 20th post: in January, Boko Haram attacked Mubang and Zar in Hong LGA while suspected fighters struck Kirchinga in Madagali LGA; in February, twin attacks killed 25 people in Shuwari and Kirchinga, followed by strikes on Guyaku and Telabala in Gombi LGA that killed 29 people where ISWAP claimed responsibility, even as the military reported killing 30 terrorists in operations targeting Boko Haram, ISWAP, and JAS elements.
As terrorism continues to ravage rural farming enclaves across Adamawa and southern Borno, indigenous communities face an existential battle for survival amidst silence, looting, and ongoing violent displacements.
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