According to a report by Channels TV from 0:58, on Tuesday November 18, 2025, Pastor Mathew Ashimolowo, the Founder and Senior Pastor of Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC), has provided a powerful personal testimony from his childhood in Zaria, asserting that the violence he witnessed against the Igbo population in the 1960s was unequivocally an act of genocide.
Ashimolowo, born in a military barracks in Zaria in 1952, stated that his understanding of the historical violence is not based on secondary reports but on firsthand, traumatic experience.
“I was born in 1952 in Zaria. I was born in the military barracks. I grew up in Kaduna. So my answer does not come out of just newspaper but experience,” the cleric stated.
He recalled the first riot he ever witnessed, confirming it was specifically aimed at people from the Eastern part of the country, where the majority of the Igbo population originates.
“The first riot I ever experienced, with all due respect, was against people from the east. I was there during the Zaria riots, your crime was that you were Igbo,” he asserted.
Ashimolowo detailed the horrors he witnessed, describing the selective killing and the terrifying atmosphere.
“They didn’t tell me. I saw it. People were being killed right before my eyes.”
He also recalled his father, a soldier, attempting to intervene, noting the depth of the violence and the attackers’ state of mind, whom he heard chanting the Hausa word Tawaye.
“My dad was a soldier trying to prevent it. And I remember the man coming back with a deep dent in his military helmet as the guys were screaming and walking the roads of Zaria and screaming Tawaye. Tawaye means our eyes have opened. They felt their eyes had opened.”
Ashimolowo concluded by firmly classifying the targeted killings as genocide, stating that people were being killed simply for their ethnicity.
“So there certainly was genocide because people were being dragged out of their house and killed,” he concluded. View, More,
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