Boko Haram Destroys Church in Adamawa Nigeria Today

"Neither women nor children are spared." Tabitha Yusuf says it plainly, the way someone says something she has repeated too many times. She survived the night the attackers came to Hong, and she knows exactly why her neighbors are dead. "Our only offense is that we are Christians."

On October 8, 2026, Boko Haram militants destroyed the EYN church — Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria — in Hong Local Government Area of Adamawa State. Rev. Mannaseh Mbafe, secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria chapter in Hong, confirmed the destruction to TruthNigeria, describing a wave of raids that did not stop with a building.

The attack on the church was not the beginning. Survivor accounts place the start of the latest assaults on the night of October 1, when armed men moved through Christian farming villages under cover of darkness. Shops, chemists and pharmacy stores were looted. Farmers were seized from their fields. And when dawn came, the people who remained started counting their missing.

What they found was systematic. Mbafe told TruthNigeria that eight entirely Christian communities have now been completely displaced — emptied out, with residents either killed, abducted, or driven from their homes. "Thousands have been displaced," he said. "We have been conducting mass burials of Christians."

"Neither women nor children are spared. 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." — Tabitha Yusuf, survivor, TruthNigeria (via Organiser)

Church Destroyed in Adamawa: Students and Farmers Abducted in Hong and Gombi

The militants struck at the most ordianry moments of village life. Students returning from their final examinations at the College of Education Waka-Biu were abducted near Tashan Alade — young people coming home from exams who simply did not make it home. Two cars, one tricycle and an unspecified number of farmers from Galanduwa were seized as well, according to TruthNigeria's reporting.

Christian farmer David Isaac told TruthNigeria that several residents were still unaccounted for days later — either killed or taken. Those who fled carried what they could. Many now shelter in Yola, the Adamawa State capital, far from the farms their families have worked for generations. The displaced say Boko Haram now occupies their villages, making any return impossible for now.

This was not an isolated raid. TruthNigeria reports that the October attacks were the fourth assault in six months on the Hong and Gombi communities — a steady drumbeat of violence that has left local clergy using words like "systematic" and "calculated." The church destroyed on October 8 was one building among several. According to a cross-verified report by the Intersociety organization, covered by The Trent on October 13, at least 40 Christians were killed, 50 abducted and three churches destroyed across Gombi and Hong LGAs between September 7 and October 8, 2026.

"What we are passing through is a systematic and calculated genocide against indigenous Christians. 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. Mannaseh Mbafe, CAN Hong LGA chapter, TruthNigeria

The international response has been muted, and that silence has a weight of its own. While courts in the West weigh questions of religious liberty in schools and public life, Christians in Adamawa are asking a far more urgent question: whether anyone beyond Nigeria is even watching. Mbafe's words — "we have lost count" — suggest a community that has run out of words for what it is living through.

Nigeria Christian Persecution: The Human Cost of the Adamawa Displacement

Behind the numbers are names and empty houses. Lydia Ishaku, displaced from her home in Garaha, described fleeing with nothing as her ancestral home fell to the attackers. Her account, given to TruthNigeria, is the story of thousands at once: ordinary farmers and traders who became refugees in their own country in a single night, because of the faith printed on their identity papers and sung in their churches.

"We are now displaced and came out with nothing. Everything was destroyed. We cannot return to our ancestral home because Boko Haram is occupying everywhere. We desperately want the government to intervene." — Lydia Ishaku, displaced resident of Garaha, TruthNigeria

The pattern is grimly familiar beyond Nigeria's borders. Just days earlier, a Christian father of three in Pakistan watched his clinic burn over a blasphemy allegation, and Christian families there fled their village the same way the families of Hong fled theirs. Different countries, different militants, same question hanging over the rubble: how long can a community keep burying its dead before the world stops scrolling past?

Local churches are doing what they can — sheltering the displaced, conducting the burials, keeping records of the missing. Rev. Mbafe and the CAN chapter continue to document the attacks, knowing that attention fades but the mass graves do not. In Yola, displaced families wait for the one thing no relief shipment can carry: safety to go home.

And still the testimony keeps surfacing. Tabitha Yusuf, who watched the night raids begin on October 1, is alive to tell it — and she is telling it, on the record, by name. Whether anyone listens may decide what happens to the ninth village. The next name on the list has not been written yet, and in Hong and Gombi, everyone knows it.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.