The air was a chill 55 degrees at midnight on Jan. 12, about as cold as it gets on the forested savannah of Nigeria’s north Plateau state, but John Rivi couldn’t think about the cold. Despite the darkness he could see the flashlights of 500 terrorists with assault rifles heading for his village of Ancha, and Rivi, 38, knew that he and 21 young men carrying single-shot rifles were the village’s first and only line of defense. As the bandits approached the volunteer guards fired their muskets and shotguns at the flashlights that were moving to encircle the village of approximately 400 souls. The response was “a rain of fire,” Rivi told The Epoch Times. The goal of the guards was to halt the attack long enough for the families with children and senior citizens to find paths out of the village before the terrorists could go from house to …