From Mosta to Maiduguri: How a Nigerian Massacre Shakes Malta’s Conscience

# Horror in Nigeria: 55 Resettled Families Massacred by Jihadists – Why Malta Should Care

The Mediterranean sun was still rising over Valletta’s honey-stoned bastions on Monday when news broke that 55 internally displaced Nigerians—people who had already fled Boko Haram once—were slaughtered in their sleep by jihadists who stormed a government-backed resettlement camp in Borno State. For most Maltese, Borno is a distant name on an atlas, but the ripples from that massacre reached our islands faster than the morning ferry from Gozo.

In Malta, we know what it means to be uprooted. Our grandparents survived convoys and bombs; today we watch dinghies arrive in Marsaxlokk carrying people who have risked everything. So when 55 souls—men, women, and children who thought they had finally found safety—are mowed down, the shockwave is felt in our parish halls, university lecture theatres, and the quiet kitchens where grandmothers still whisper rosaries for strangers.

## A double blow for the displaced

The attack happened on Sunday night in the village of Mafa, 40 kilometres from the regional capital Maiduguri. Survivors say gunmen arrived on motorbikes, torched newly built straw-thatched homes, and fired indiscriminately at families who had only just returned from years in squalid camps. These were people who had heeded President Tinubu’s promise that the insurgency was “technically defeated.” Instead, they met the same horror they had fled.

For Malta’s 5,000-strong Nigerian diaspora—nurses in Mater Dei, IT specialists in SmartCity, theology students in Gżira—each new death toll is personal. “My cousin was planning to join the resettlement scheme,” says Chinelo, a midwife who has called St Julian’s home since 2018. “Now my auntie can’t reach him. Networks are down; we’re sick with worry.”

## Why the massacre matters to Malta

Beyond empathy, the attack has direct Maltese relevance. Three of the EU-funded stability projects in Borno are managed by Maltese NGOs: the John XXIII Peace Lab, Kopin, and the Missionary Society of St Paul. Their clinics, literacy classes, and micro-credit schemes were precisely the kind of soft targets hit hardest. “We had just finished a women’s cooperative garden in Mafa,” says Sr Carmen Sammut, who flew back from Nigeria last week. “Those seedlings were meant to feed 200 families. Now they’re fertilised by blood.”

The tragedy also throws a spotlight on Malta’s own migration debate. Government statistics show that Nigeria remains the single largest country of origin for asylum seekers crossing the central Mediterranean. Every time a village like Mafa is razed, the pressure valve in Lagos or Benin City hisses louder. “Europe cannot preach integration while ignoring the fires that force people to flee,” warns Mario Gerada, a lecturer in migration studies at the University of Malta. “What happened on Sunday is a recruitment video for the next flimsy boat leaving Zuwarah.”

## Community response: from Mosta to Maiduguri

Within hours, the Maltese-Nigerian Catholic community announced a candlelit vigil outside the Mosta Rotunda for this Friday evening. St Paul’s Missionary College is collecting medical kits to ship via a Turkish air bridge already used during the 2019 Ebola crisis. Meanwhile, local band Noah’s Ark will stream a tribute concert on Lovin Malta, with proceeds going to emergency shelters run by Caritas Nigeria.

Back in Sliema, 11-year-old Jade Attard—whose class at St Dorothy’s is twinned with a school in Maiduguri—has launched a TikTok campaign under the hashtag #DrawForMafa. “We’re sending drawings of the Maltese cross to show we’re still holding them,” she says, waving a purple marker like a tiny flag of solidarity.

## The takeaway

Fifty-five lives extinguished in a place most Maltese will never see. Yet the smoke from those burning huts drifts across the sea and settles on our conscience. Because if we truly believe in the Mediterranean as a mare nostrum—our common sea—then every act of terror on its southern shore is an attack on our shared humanity.

Tonight, when the church bells of Mdina ring out over the silent fields, listen closely: they toll not just for Nigeria, but for all of us.