Shortly after the victory of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai in the Kaduna governorship election Pastor Emmanuel Danjuma Garkida was attacked by unknown persons for being a Christian.
Narrating his story to VANGUARD, Garkida who is a Pastor with the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG said, ''OI come from Borno State, but I am a serving pastor with the Redeemed Church of God, Yobe Province. My wife is a native of Abadawa, Saminaka in Kaduna State and she had come back to her parents and put to bed a baby boy a week earlier. I had come to see her, my kids and her family, and I could name the new child.
''I took a bike, that morning to go see my fellow pastor in the other side of Saminaka to help officiate the ceremony. I reached the bridge on my way to Abadawa when I met some Hausa youths carrying weapons and inflicting injuries on passersby who were not of their own. But since I know some of the boys, I asked them to show mercy on people. To my surprise some of them started yelling, “Kill him! Kill the infidel! Cut him down!”, he said.
''One of them rushed at me with a machete. I don’t know how I managed to grab him and threw him away. Another came with a sword and aimed at my neck, I used my hand to receive the blow. I started running, and one of them used a cutlass and wounded me at the back of my head. I started bleeding and I could feel the blood dripping on my clothes. I kept running, and they kept hitting me with sticks and stabbing me with knives until I fell.
''As they were coming to finish me off, the last thing I remembered was that a Hausa man, well dressed in white agbada and cap sped on a bike and arrived at my side. The man shouted at them in Hausa, ‘leave this man alone and disappear now! Are you not satisfied that you have killed him? Every one of you must leave immediately I don’t know what happened afterwards. I went into coma, the bleeding and pains were too much.
''The man whom I had never met before was said to have stayed there with me, as I later learnt, until my friend, Skido, a Yoruba man, came and evacuated me to an hospital in Saminaka. I was told that I had ruptured intestine. The doctor had to bring out my entire intestine and clean up by stomach before stitching me back. I have been stabbed in many places. You can see the healing wounds. I was brought here to Jengree when my condition got worse. But I am fine now. And I thank God for sparing my life. My sister and mother have been the ones bearing the emotional and financial burden of this problem alone”.
