So sad!!! Herdsmen attack pastor and his family

At 7:45pm on Tuesday, 3rd May, 2020, gunmen
suspected to be Fulani herdsmen, invaded the
home of Rev. Bayo Famonure. Bayo Famonure is
a seventy-year old pioneer missionary with
CAPRO international ministries in Gana Ropp, a
community on the outskirts of Jos, Plateau State.
Uncle Bayo, as he is popularly called, had just
completed the evening devotion with his wife and
two sons and they all retired to their rooms. Bayo
Famonure was in his study reading the Bible when
armed men, suspected to be Fulani herdsmen,
broke into his home and headed straight for him.
In an obvious assassination attempt, eight men
entered Uncle Bayo’s study brandishing AK47
machine guns. They drew him out of the chair to
the center of the room. After demanding the
whereabouts of other people in the house and
getting no meaningful response from him, the
attackers opened fire on Uncle Bayo. He was shot
in the head at close range (within five meters).
Believing he was dead, the gunmen went to the
other rooms in the house. They found A’dua, one
of Uncle Bayo’s sons, and were about to abduct
him when his mother (Uncle’s wife) and his
brother resisted them. In the process the gunmen
shot the woman in the back and the two boys in
the leg. In the frenzy that followed and realizing
that the sounds of their guns would have attracted
security men and neighbors around, the gunmen
fled the home of this missionary couple.

Bayo Famonure is a man I know very well. He is
family—the elder brother of my wife’s mother. As
a man of God, he has all these years offered
spiritual oversight to his family and even the
extended family. He is a man that is much
beloved and respected in the family.
Beyond family life, Uncle Bayo was a pioneer
missionary with CAPRO Nigeria. Following his
bachelor’s degree and having gone to serve in
Zaria in Kaduna State in the early 1970s, Uncle
Bayo had abandoned secular work and headed
into the dirty waters of mission works. He did not
choose the cozy environment of Lagos or Ibadan
or Port Harcourt; rather he went to the hostile
communities of Zaria to serve Jesus Christ. And
he has been at this since then, moving to Gana
Ropp in the Jos area sometimes in the 1990s to
serve the Lord.
Uncle Bayo’s vision in ministry had been primarily
to serve Jesus Christ by sharing the gospel with
his host community. A missionary to the core,
Bayo Famonure had wholly depended on Christ
for sustenance in ministry. He and others worked
with CAPRO from a fledgling missionary
organization to the household name it has
become today. It was in the middle of serving the
Lord that this attack came on him and his family.
The good news is that despite shooting him, his
wife and two sons at close range, they all
survived miraculously. The bullet to his head did
not penetrate his skull and the one to his legs did
not shatter a bone.
The question that this article ponders on is this:
how long will these attacks continue?
First, there is the political matter of whether or not
to label these attackers “Fulani herdsmen” or
“suspected Fulani herdsmen”. There is a world of
difference between these two terms. One’s
traducers will respond by saying that no one else
was in the house with the Famonures to
corroborate their allegations that it was Fulani
herdsmen who attacked them. Others will reply:
how come only one ethnic group has been alleged
of these killings since they began a few years
ago?
There is also the political question of how come
Fulani herdsmen attacks were almost nonexistent
until the coming of this present administration? It
appears, some argue, that the presence of Buhari
at the helms of affairs in this country has
emboldened his kinsmen to do as they please. Up
till the time of writing this, there has been no
Fulani herdsman prosecuted let alone convicted
for these crimes. Another person will reply by
saying that it was probably because the Fulanis
are not culpable. Or, is it because our law
enforcement agents have turned a blind eye to the
violence?
Now let us get certain things clear as citizens of
this country. Nigeria as presently constituted is a
secular state. It means it is neither Christian nor
Muslim. The nation’s constitution allows people to
practice whatever religion they wish. This also
includes freedom of gathering and association.
The concept of a modern secular state followed
years of religious wars in Europe. After Martin
Luther disrupted the peace of Europe in the
sixteenth century with the coming of the
Protestant religion, Europe was plunged in
religious crisis. Following the 30-year war that
ended in 1648 and destroyed most of Germany,
Europe began to toy with the idea of religious
toleration. It meant that in a modern state people
could practice whatever religion they wished. It is
this concept that the Americans further
developed, thus leading to the practice of
separating the State from the church.
What toleration means is that every citizen of a
country can practice their religion. Every citizen
can seek proselytes of other religion to theirs. But
no one must be coerced against practicing the
tenets of his religion. Religious proselytization
must also start with words and end with words.
No one uses the sword or gun to propagate his
religion in modern times. Even modern Islam, at
least in enlightened nations, has jettisoned the
idea of spreading religion with the sword. This is
why most Muslims abhor the Boko Haram
ideology. The modern state has tolerance at the
heart of religious practice.
With this in mind, one must then call on the
authorities in this country to address the violation
of the rights of one man, Rev. Adebayo Famonure,
to practice his religion in freedom. The Nigerian
state, which we all belong to and in which we are
tax payers, has the responsibility of protecting its
citizens. And this protection begins with fishing at
the persons who have sought to snuff out life
from Uncle Bayo and his family. The Nigerian
state should also kindly work hard at bringing an
end to the usage of this word “suspected”. This
word has offered undue alibi to hundreds of
criminal figures to perpetrate all kinds of evil on
law-abiding Nigerians. Let us know, once and for
all, what these animals in human skin want and
let the country settle this question forever. We
cannot be battling Boko Haram without and Boko
Haram within. The government will do well to
attend to these issues.
The last thing anyone needs at these times of the
Coronavirus pandemic is an attack on their lives
and then spending unnecessary time in the
hospital. As I write, Uncle Bayo and his family are
recuperating in the hospital. This country owes
this family a duty to protect them. Indeed we all
deserve to live in safety and peace in our own
country.
Disclaimer: This article is NOBELIE. COM personal
observations on the attack on the family. It
is not the family official statement on it. Thank you