Truth Nigeria reporter Masara Kim came under fire when the funeral he was covering was attacked by Fulani extremists. Murder, abductions, and village attacks have become part of daily life for Nigeria’s Christians. Photos courtesy of Masara Kim, screenshots from video reports.
On the night of May 5, eight Christians were murdered when Fulani extremists attacked Nding village in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area, Plateau State, Nigeria. The following morning, the extremists returned and launched another attack during the funeral.
Truth Nigeria reporter Masara Kim was covering the funeral when he suddenly found himself running for his life amid the sound of gunfire.
In an interview with the Gateway Pundit, Kim said that as he stood filming in front of the mutilated bodies from the attack, his thoughts turned to Mark 13, where Jesus warns of wars and rumors of wars.
He reflected that biblical prophecy speaks of people hearing about distant events, but he was confronting those realities face-to-face.
“On the one hand, it was relieving to know that the end of the tribulation, the end of suffering, the end of pain, for me as a persecuted Christian, is near. But on the other hand, it was really, really terrifying.”
Among the victims was a nine-year-old girl. Even though he was accustomed to witnessing the effects of violence, Kim said this case broke through that experience.
“I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that somebody could be so cruel, could be so wicked as to go for an innocent child… a little girl who couldn’t hold a sword, couldn’t shoot even a slingshot, much less pose a threat to anyone.”
He described seeing her lowered into the grave, the remains of her brain still visible. He said he looked at the other bodies, four women and two men, and though he fought back his tears, “my heart was completely shattered.”
Kim was still filming when people began to run. He initially estimated the gunshots to be two to three kilometers away and thought security forces might arrive in time.
A community leader then urged him to stop and help bury the dead immediately. The grave had been dug only about two feet deep. There were no funeral rites, no hymns. Mourners said the Lord’s Prayer and left.
When shooting reached them, Kim said the moment transformed him.
“I was no longer the reporter, I was now becoming the story.”
Running alongside other mourners, he prayed aloud for two things: mercy on his own soul, and mercy on those he would be leaving behind. He said he had already accepted death, but his concern was for those who die slowly and in pain.
He described a man shot and hacked with machetes in 2010 who, sixteen years later, still endures daily pain that no painkiller can touch, a man who, Kim said, “has learned to just ignore the pain and live as though nothing is wrong, but deep inside knows the pain that sometimes makes him wish he was dead instead.”
Kim said he has been shot at approximately five times in his career.
The first incident he recounted was June 23, 2018, when more than 250 Christians were killed in the Gashish district of Barkinladi County, Plateau State, roughly 30 miles southwest of Jos. He had traveled there to attend a colleague’s father’s funeral and to investigate ongoing attacks in the region. Before the service ended, he observed Fulani men gathering on the surrounding hills.
A motorcyclist was shot and killed 500 to 600 meters from the venue, and a woman was killed two miles away. When mourners departed in a convoy, their vehicle was riddled with bullets. By the following morning, more than 250 Christians were dead.
“I called, I texted, I pleaded, but they never responded,” he said of the soldiers assigned to protect them. “They never intervened.”
In 2020, he returned to the same region to oversee construction of a well for displaced residents of a community where more than 90 people had been killed. Survivors had spent over two years in IDP camps with no government support, sharing an open stream with animals. Two children had already died of cholera from contaminated water.
Kim raised funds to drill the well, and during one of his inspection visits to the community of Nghar in the Gashish district, Fulani gunmen opened fire on his vehicle. He and his companions escaped and spent the night in a nearby church.
That September, he was pursued for 45 to 50 minutes at night while returning from a reporting assignment. Unknown men in a vehicle repeatedly attempted to block his path, and he drove at high speed through multiple streets before escaping.
In May 2017, he had traveled to the northeast to report from Chibok, where more than 200 Christian girls had been kidnapped by Boko Haram three years earlier, and terrorists opened fire on his convoy en route.
The most intense experience, by his account, came on May 16, 2023, when he covered the aftermath of an attack in Mangu, Plateau State, that had killed 50 people the previous night. His team was attacked three times that day.
During the first attack, more than 20 gunmen opened fire before police, and Civil Defense Corps officers pushed them back. Moving further into the area, they encountered a force Kim estimated at more than a thousand fighters, still being reinforced by arrivals on motorcycles.
Retreating through the same community, they ran into a third ambush, forcing officers to abandon their vehicles and flee on foot.
“I had already seen what the bullets of these terrorists had done to those guys on the floor,” Kim said. “And now those bullets were coming for me. I already saw myself in the same condition as the victims I had just filmed.”
His consolation, as it had been each time, was the promise of eternal life.
Mainstream media outlets and Democratic lawmakers in America have argued that these attacks are not religiously motivated. They have also criticized President Trump and other members of the Trump administration who have described the attacks as genocide.
Meanwhile, Nigerian Christians are being killed on a daily basis, and brave men like Masara Kim are risking their lives to get the word out.
The question is whether anyone in the international community will listen.
The post Reporting on the Massacre of His Own People: Nigerian Christian Journalist Explains Why He Risks His Life appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.