By Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News Correspodent
ABUJA (Worthy News)-- In Gwoza, Abubakar Shekau -- the leader of the Islamist Boko Haram -- has declared an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria's northeastern Borno State, according to International Christian Concern.
Once a predominantly Christian town situated near Nigeria's border with Cameroon, Gwoza was seized by Haram on August 5, prompting the massacre of up to 1,000 Christians after the Nigerian military mutinied and refused to try and retake the town.
For weeks, Haram has captured towns like Gwoza to encircle Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State that the Islamic insurgency apparently intends to take as well.
"Today, a once-predominantly Christian town in northeast Nigeria joined the Islamic caliphate at the expense of far too many Christians martyred, displaced, and terrorized at the hands of armed extremists," said Cameron Thomas, ICC's Regional Manager for Africa. "For years, Boko Haram has waged a campaign of terror against Christians, moderate Muslims, educators and students, and law enforcement and military personnel for the establishment of a separate Islamic state, which today they felt capable of declaring. Such a declaration should serve as rallying point for the international community to come together and lend its full support to the Nigerian state in its battle against Boko Haram and all other extreme ideologies plaguing the stability of not only that state, but the entire region."
Since 2009, Haram has been waging a war to establish a separate Islamic state ruled by sharia. It is also responsible for the mass-abduction of more than 270 schoolgirls from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok.