The Watchman

Stopped at the Checkpoint: A Pastor's Family Is Taken on the Damasak Road

On Saturday, July 18, a commercial vehicle left Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria's Borno state, heading northwest toward the town of Damasak near the Niger border. Among the passengers were the wife of Pastor Moses Guguma and their three children. She had just been discharged from a hospital in Maiduguri after an illness, and she was traveling to rejoin her husband at his station.

Near the village of Kareto, in Mobbar Local Government Area, gunmen stopped the vehicle. What happened next, according to an eyewitness who spoke to International Christian Concern, was a sorting.

"The gunmen ordered the pastor's wife and her children to leave the vehicle but permitted the driver and other passengers to continue their journey because they are all Muslims," the witness said. The four were marched into the bush. The stop took place near a Nigerian Army checkpoint on the Maiduguri to Damasak highway.

Pastor Guguma leads a congregation of the Church of Christ in All Nations, known as COCIN, in Damasak. "My wife was sick. She just recovered, and she was discharged from the hospital, coming to my station to see me and continued the ministry," he told ICC.

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