Those who are concerned about issues of religious freedom and the persecuted church worldwide will need no introduction to the situation in Nigeria, even when normal broadcast media has ignored it. For years it has ranked among the worst violators of basic human rights.
According to the international Christian advocacy group Open Doors, which publishes an annual “World Watch List,” “more Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than in the rest of the world combined.”1 In 2022, roughly 5,000 Christians were murdered for their faith, and in 2023, one estimate put the number of Nigerian Christians targeted and killed at over 8,000.2
Since 2009, Boko Haram, which loosely translates “Western education is forbidden,” has been committed to violently establishing an Islamic state in Nigeria, with twelve states imposing sharia law. Doubtless this has emboldened various extremist Islamic groups in the region. In 2023 alone, 31 people were arrested on blasphemy charges in the country’s northern states. Back in January of 2012, Boko Haram issued an ultimatum that Christians living in northern Nigeria must leave their homes within three days. This followed on the heels of the slaughter of thirty people on the previous Christmas day at a Catholic church near Abuja, the nation’s capital. In 2013, the U.S. finally designated Boko Haram a terrorist organization.
One official of the Church of the Brethren in Mubi tells us that when Boko Haram arrives in their region, they ask one question: “Are you a Christian or a Muslim?” When you answer Christian, they shoot you, and then the church is burned to the ground.3
Boko Haram has been joined by other militant Islamist groups that include Fulani, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and the newly-organized Lakurawa. In addition, Al-Shabaab has been observed operating in Nigeria. In 2018 President Trump raised the issue of genocide with Nigeria’s government. Alas, no respite has occurred in the last seven years.
Beyond Christian targets, who by far constitute the majority of victims, Boko Haram has killed moderate Muslims as well, including Muslim clerics who oppose them or who are sympathetic to peaceful coexistence with other religions. Thus, both Christians and Muslims, in this country of roughly 230 million people, have been slaughtered over the last decade and a half. John Joseph Hayab, a pastor and leader of the Christian Association of Nigeria in the country’s northern region, notes, “We have raised this matter [mass killing] dozens of times, but nobody hears us.” Hayab praises any U.S. efforts to expose Christian persecution in his country. Why, we are forced to ask, are these killings not a policy matter at the international level?
Nigerian missionary Fred Williams laments what has been his experience working in Nigeria. Remarkably, he recalls, 9/11 was not only the occasion of unprecedented terrorist attacks in the U.S.; on the very same date Islamist terrorists first attacked his village in Plateau State in Nigeria’s north-central region. Williams now lives in the U.K. but returns to Nigeria four times a year. In his view, the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria is worse than genocide. “Most of what is happening is too graphic to show media. That is how bad it is,” he laments. David Smith, the U.K.’s Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief, agrees, warning that Christianity is being “wiped out” in this part of the world.
To their credit, a growing chorus of U.S. congressmen in recent months and in recent days has responded to the increase in genocidal activity in Nigeria. In 2025 alone, resolutions in Congress have been proposed by Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). To his great credit, Rep. Moore, a Roman Catholic, has spoken out repeatedly on the issue of global persecution since his first House of Representatives speech in April. In September, Sen. Cruz introduced the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025, with the aim of holding Nigerian officials accountable who are complicit in the enforcement of sharia law and blasphemy laws.
The most recent of these congressional resolutions has commended the Trump administration for its attention to the matter of religious freedom and the President’s recent redesignation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) while calling for specific policy action. In early November, Rep. Smith introduced a House resolution both commending re-designation of Nigeria as a CPC and outlining specific actions the U.S. State Department should take to address religious freedom violations. Two days later a similar resolution was introduced to the House by Rep. Moore.
But in response a strong backlash has erupted from Nigerian leaders, particularly after President Trump designated Nigeria for a second time a CPC on October 31 (the first occasion being December of 2020, after which the Biden administration inexplicably removed Nigeria from the list). What unites all of their accusations against the U.S. is the element of denial. Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a Muslim who took office in May of 2023, vigorously rejects the idea of a “Christian genocide” occurring there. Not insignificantly, Tinubu was conspicuously absent from President Trump’s July 2025 meeting at the White House with West African Leaders. In a Nov. 1 post on X, Tinubu wrote: “Nigeria stands firmly as a democratic government by constitutional guarantees of religious liberty.” Further, “The characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national identity, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians.” And in a statement released on Nov. 1, the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called Trump’s claims “inaccurate.”
Yet all of the evidence confirms that it is Islamic extremists who are doing the killing. Whether the victims are Christians or moderate Muslims, the murderers are Islamists, who have been—and continue to be—undeterred.
Data from independent organizations shed light on the dire state of affairs in Nigeria. According to a report published by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (InterSociety) in 2023, jihadists have killed over 100,000 Christians since 2009. According to the same report, ca. 60,000 “moderate” Muslims were killed in the same period. According to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), InterSociety’s figure of 100,000 deaths is undisputed but includes all political violence in Nigeria. Data from the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) are equally revealing – and disturbing. From October 2019 to September 2024, ORFA has documented 66,656 killings in Nigeria, and Fulani militants were responsible for 47% of these. For every Muslim killed during this period, 2.4 Christians were killed. What’s more, during this same five-year period, 29,180 people were abducted, with a stunning pattern of increase: in 2020, 1665; in 2024, 7648.
The source of these crimes against humanity, whether the victims are Christian or Muslim, is Islamist. Countering the standard herder-versus-farmer rationale for conflict that is offered by many Nigerian politicians, political analyst Zayiri Yusuf, who hails from Nigeria’s Middle Belt, insists that Islamists have primarily targeted Christian communities. “I am yet to find any Muslim community where people have been sacked and others came in to occupy those places,” he notes. And when in June Fulani “herders” struck the community of Yelwata, in Benue State, they initially targeted a local Catholic church before moving on to private homes; overnight several hundred people were slaughtered. Did we ever hear about this slaughter? Where, we may ask, is the outrage?
Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom, says that the Nigerian government does nothing to help Christians and protect them. Shea, along with thirty other advocates, organizations and think-tanks, wrote a letter in October to President Trump, lamenting that according to Christian leaders in Nigeria, the Nigerian government is tolerating relentless aggression. Indeed, they are tolerating genocide, based on all available data.
What, then, is to be done? What is our responsibility? We pray and we act. And we do both as if our lives depended on it. Our government has an important role to play. In addition to providing immediate humanitarian relief, this would include conditioning U.S. aid to Nigeria, dependent on whether and how Nigerian officials take concrete action in protecting religious freedom and deterring outrageous human rights violations. Collaboration between the State and Treasury Departments would also facilitate actions such as banning visas, imposing economic sanctions, freezing assets, and the like. International law at present would appear to be non-existent; thus, it is incumbent on those nations having the capacity to ensure religious freedom and deter genocide, crimes against humanity, and gross human rights violations to do so. And where terrorism is unbridled and socio-political evil abounds, coercive intervention cannot be ruled out. That, of course, is the moral condition of last resort and part of the classic just war tradition.
America’s founders spoke of the rights of sacred conscience. In a fallen world, it is a simple fact that these must be defended.
Someone has said that people really do not cherish their own freedom if and where they are unwilling to intervene on behalf of others who stand in dire need. Rep. Chris Smith, only days ago, was right to argue that “It is well past the time that the U.S. holds the Nigerian government responsible for its inability – or unwillingness – to fully confront and combat the unchecked, widespread religious persecution occurring within its borders.” Indeed, well past the time.
Once more, ancient proverbial wisdom calls us to respond:
Rescue those who are being led away toward death,
Hold back those stumbling toward the slaughter.
If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,”
Does not He who weights the heart consider it?
Does not He who guards your life not know it?
And will He not repay each person
According to what that person has done? (Proverbs 24:11–12)
