Deborah Emmanuel, a Nigerian Christian student who was killed by a Muslim mob last month, spent her last moments with a close friend who told CNA in-depth information about the horrible murder

Deborah Emmanuel, a Nigerian Christian student who was killed by a Muslim mob last month, spent her last moments with a close friend who told CNA in-depth information about the horrible murder.

For the woman’s safety, CNA is using the alias “Mary”. She was nearly slaughtered by the same mob despite being a Christian herself.

Mary’s narrative, in an important way, refutes the assertion made by the authorities that they tried to save Emmanuel from the mob but were “overwhelmed.”

In contrast, Mary told CNA that the police “could have stopped the murder if they had actually tried.”

On May 12, on the campus of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, the capital of Sokoto State and a significant metropolis in the northwest of Nigeria, Emmanuel was allegedly killed for blasphemy.

The Muslim Sultan, who is the supreme religious figure for Nigeria’s 100 million Muslim adherents, resides in the city.

Before the attack, fanatical Muslim students at the teacher’s college harassed Emmanuel, a home economics major who joined Evangelical Church Winning All, for audio utterances she made on the messaging app WhatsApp.

She gave Jesus Christ credit for her performance on a recent exam, and when pressured to apologize, she resisted by calling on the Holy Spirit and exclaiming, “Holy Ghost fire! According to WhatsApp texts examined by CNA, “Nothing will happen to me.”

A Muslim mob attacked Emmanuel on the college’s campus after these contentious talks.

According to gruesome video footage online, the mob battered and stoned her to death after an hour-long siege before setting her body on fire with flaming tires.

Later that week, rioters stormed additional Christian-owned buildings and ransacked a Catholic Church compound in Sokoto.

Another relative of Emmanuel told CNA that he was positioned about 60 feet away from the throng and thought the cops could have spared her.

For his own protection, he also requested that his identify be kept anonymous.

According to a university security report given to CNA, unarmed campus security personnel made a fruitless attempt to save Emmanuel.

However, according to Emmanuel’s relative, scores of armed police officers were present but did not use force.

Officers did not fire their firearms, according to the state’s police commissioner.

According to a story in The Epoch Times, he insisted that only 15 of his officers were present.

Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of the Diocese of Sokoto has vehemently denounced the attack and called for the prosecution of Emmanuel’s killers.

He declared, “This situation requires criminal prosecution. His complete statement is available here.

a cry for aid

Around nine o’clock in the morning on the day of Emmanuel’s death, she frantically called Mary, pleading for assistance.

According to Mary, by that point, Emmanuel was being slapped by the female residents of her hostel, CNA.

When Mary got on campus, she discovered her companion being protected in a gatehouse building while being surrounded by a throng.

According to Mary, the male students who believed it was their responsibility to murder a blasphemer immediately joined the Muslim students who had bled her face and head with rod hits.

Hours were spent shouting “Allahu Akbar!” which is Arabic for “God is Great.”

Mary originally tried to intervene for her buddy by staying outside the structure, but she claimed that not long after that, the mob turned on her as well.

Mary quickly began to retreat away from the gatehouse and toward the college’s gate, which was 40 feet distant, while dodging punches and blows with sticks.

By 10 a.m., Mary said that a college lecturer had saved her and taken her to meet Emmanuel inside the gatehouse.

According to the relative, six members of the Department of State Security (DSS), which is the equivalent of the FBI in the United States, arrived around 10:25 am and fired their guns in the air without having any impact.

He claimed that five minutes later, many Sokoto police officers arrived on the site and sprayed tear gas, briefly dispersing the crowd.

According to Emmanuel’s cousin, police had a window of opportunity to split up the throng and break through the gatehouse to free Mary and Emmanuel for around ten minutes. But that didn’t take place.

The mob had returned to the building by 11 a.m., putting cloths to their faces to protect themselves from tear gas. Mary barricaded herself behind a table as the mob attempted to throw stones at her through the closed gatehouse’s windows.

Then, according to Mary, the mob tried to burn the women alive by throwing gasoline on them through the front windows.

“Deborah was soaked with gasoline, but when lighted plastic was pitched in through the windows, I quickly stamped the flames out,” Mary said.

No escape

According to Emmanuel’s relative, all of this took place as police and DSS officers observed it from a safe distance.

Emmanuel still hoped to perform her examination that day, Mary claimed, but the distraught women hardly spoke to one another. She remembered Emmanuel asking at one point, “What time is it? At twelve, I had a test.

Mary claimed she checked her phone and discovered it was 1 p.m.

The mob broke the door’s lock after another agonizing hour of the siege, knocked down the lone Sokoto policeman who was manning it, and barged inside to discover Mary and Emmanuel hiding behind some furniture.

Mary and the relative were there. Mary recalled how two rioters tried to choke her by wrapping a chain around her neck and yanking it firmly.

“Let this girl go! She is not an offender,” Mary recalled one of the rioters shouting. But as they released her, a young man in the mob grabbed Emmanuel and took her to the front steps of the gatehouse.

There she was bludgeoned with steel pipes and wooden rods and stoned, the relative said.

The relative claimed that two DSS officials who tried to save Emmanuel were pelted with stones and shoved aside. He claimed that the police officers stood their ground and did not assist her.

After being strangled, Mary collapsed inside the gatehouse, gasping for air. She claimed that after waiting for around 40 minutes, a member of the mob roused her and told her to flee the burning building.

Mary noticed the gatehouse on fire and Emmanuel’s lifeless body engulfed in flames as she moved through the smoke.

The face of Christian persecution

In the aftermath of Emmanuel’s murder, human rights advocates and others have leveled sharp criticism at Nigeria’s government leaders for not doing enough to stem the rising tide of violence directed at Christians and other non-Muslims.

Anti-Christian hatred was evident in days of rioting in Sokoto following the arrest of two suspects in Emmanuel’s murder. The rioters reportedly were incensed that there were any arrests at all.

“Deborah Emmanuel, like kidnapping victim Leah Sharibu (who was enslaved by Boko Haram insurgents in 2019), has become the face of Christian persecution in Nigeria,” said Kyle Abts, executive director of the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON). “There has not been an official report from the security forces on the lynching of Ms. Emmanuel. Her killing and subsequent riots show clear government complicity and coverup.”

Hardwired Global founder Tina Ramirez agrees that the Nigerian government has been reluctant to take a strong stance against blasphemy executions.

“The recent attacks on students are reminiscent of the attacks at Nigerian colleges two decades ago that were the precursor to the growth of extremist groups across Nigeria’s North and Middle Belt,” Ramirez wrote in a text to CNA.