Nigeria Christian Massacre: Unarmed Watchman Shot, Family Murdered in Mangu LGA

Fulani herdsmen attacked Bin Per, a remote Christian village in Kumbun District, Mangu LGA, Plateau State, roughly 45 kilometers northeast of Jos, on the night of August 18, 2026. Attackers came on foot, breaking into homes and shooting villagers as they slept. At least 24 people were killed, most of them women and children. The Nigerian Army, when called, did not arrive until after the attackers had already left the area.

Shadrach Ayuba, a village watchman and member of the Cochin Church Binter Regional Church Council in Boi, was on vigilante duty between 11 p.m. and midnight when gunfire broke out. He said he heard the attackers speaking the Fulani language as he tried to flee.

Ayuba had little choice but to flee because the security forces defending Christian villages are armed with either homemade muskets or sticks. Although the Fulani came on foot in this particular attack, they often arrive on motorcycles in numbers as large as 200, armed with AK-47s, leaving village watchmen no match for them.

Currently, there is a bill in the Nigerian National Assembly that would allow state governments to create their own police forces to defend Christian villages. It has passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate and is awaiting ratification by state legislatures. But as of right now, the watchmen are unarmed. The best they can do is observe the attackers and then try to race back to the village to alert others to escape to the jungle and hide.

A bullet struck him in the leg as he ran, but he continued on foot, applying pressure to the wound as he made his way toward a bridge crossing a stream between Binter and Afer village. Hearing footsteps behind him, he hid in a cornfield and then in thick bush before swimming across the river to reach Afer, where residents put him on a motorcycle to a clinic.

During the attack, gunmen entered Ayuba’s house, where his wife and four children were sleeping. His daughter escaped, but his three sons, Pamret, 13; Fwanshak, 9; and Kespan, 1, were killed along with their mother, Nanbam, 30.

Ayuba said he could not get information by phone about his family’s condition from the hospital until the following morning, when he was told that his wife and three sons had been killed. “There was no any security all throughout the attack,” he said.

A second survivor, whose name was not given, said the attack began around 11:30 p.m. while he was off duty from the village’s rotating watchman system and had stepped outside. He saw a large group of armed men approaching, hid on a nearby farm, and heard rapid gunfire moments later as the attackers entered his compound and opened fire inside the room where his family slept.

After the gunfire subsided, he returned to his compound and found his daughter shot through the forehead in her sleeping position and his two sons shot in the back in the living room.

Of the six members of his household, three children were killed. His wife was wounded while shielding two of the children with her body. The survivor said this is what allowed his youngest son, Nathan, and another son, Gabriel, to survive. “If God had not intervened, it might have been all of us, six people, would be killed,” he said.

He and a neighbor who had also been on watchman duty went from house to house afterward, checking on residents. He said most of the dead were found inside their rooms, with one exception found on a nearby farm.

A village pastor, addressing the community the morning after the attack, said, “This morning we are mourning bitterly for the barbaric action that these people have taken on this community over the night.” He said 24 dead bodies lay before the community as he spoke and rejected characterizations of the violence as anything other than genocide: “As I’m speaking, people were denying that there’s no genocide, but see what is happening, see small children, innocent souls were being killed.”

He said the governor, the local government chairman, and ministers of the gospel had all condemned the attack, “yet there’s no any action and the issue is getting out of hand.”