OPINION:
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with over 242 million people, is in the grip of a security crisis that is systematically destroying religious freedom for millions of its citizens.
Fresh data from the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa’s (ORFA) June 2026 six-year report and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) May 2026 update paint a grim picture of targeted violence against Christian communities.
The Trump administration has described the violence as genocide against Christians. Nigeria’s Tinubu administration rejects any religious motivation, framing the killings primarily as banditry and criminality that affect Muslims as well a view echoed in part by the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, who has noted the complex mix of factors while acknowledging disproportionate impacts on Christian communities in certain regions.
Between October 2019 and September 2025, ORFA documented 79,323 people killed and 34,917 abducted in attacks linked to terror groups and bandits. Among civilian deaths, Christians accounted for more than twice as many victims as Muslims. When adjusted for local population sizes in affected states, Christians were killed at a rate of 4.4 to 1 compared to Muslims.
Abductions affected both groups in roughly equal numbers, but Christian captives often faced higher ransoms, longer ordeals, sexual violence and a greater risk of execution.
Fulani-linked militant groups estimated by USCIRF at around 30,000 fightershave emerged as the dominant force behind much of the killing, surpassing Boko Haram and militant group Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
ORFA attributes a large share of Christian civilian deaths to these mostly Muslim Fulani ethnic militias (often called Fulani Ethnic Militia or FEM), who operate across Nigeria’s northwest and the Middle Belt. They launch night raids on Christian farming villages and abduct worshippers from churches. Millions have been driven from ancestral lands; hundreds of communities remain occupied and too dangerous to reclaim. The Nigerian government often fails to recognize these victims as internally displaced persons, leaving women and children especially vulnerable with little access to aid.
In 2025 alone, mass killings in Benue and Plateau states claimed hundreds of lives, including displaced Christians sheltering at a Catholic mission. In Niger State, gunmen abducted 315 students and teachers from St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri one of the largest school kidnappings in recent history.
The violence showed no let-up in 2026, as attacks timed to Christian holy seasons continued. A Palm Sunday massacre in Jos’s Ungwan Rukuba area killed around 30 people. On Easter Sunday in Kaduna’s Ariko village (Kachia Local Government Area), gunmen stormed an Evangelical Church Winning All congregation and nearby St. Augustine’s Catholic Church during services, killing at least 12. The Nigerian Army claimed to have rescued 31 hostages, but Christian leaders and local residents disputed the assertion, saying there was no rescue and many captives remained missing. Similar deadly strikes happened across Benue, Nasarawa and other Middle Belt areas.
This campaign directly undermines religious freedom. Survivors describe communities too fearful to gather for worship, churches abandoned or burned, and clergy deliberately targeted. According to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), at least 212 Catholic priests were kidnapped across 41 of Nigeria’s 59 dioceses between 2015 and 2025. Of those, 183 were released or escaped, 12 were murdered, and three died later from injuries and trauma; at least four remained in captivity as of late 2025. Agenzia Fides reported 145 priests kidnapped and 11 killed in the same period, with Kaduna among the hardest hit.
Fides noted five Catholic church workers murdered in Nigeria that year. As one ACN report observed, when a priest disappears, “an entire parish is left without protection, leadership or hope.”
The Nigerian government has taken some positive steps designating certain bandit groups as terrorists, moving to end pardon programs for repentant fighters, and advancing state-level policing following the U.S. designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern in late 2025. Yet critics, including USCIRF, highlight slow security responses and inconsistent accountability. Proposed U.S. targeted sanctions and reviews of Foreign Terrorist Organizations reflect growing bipartisan concern in Washington.
Rep. Riley Moore, West Virginia Repulican, whom President Trump appointed to monitor religious violence in Nigeria, stated on X in July: “As I have been saying since I started investigating the genocide against Christians in Nigeria, Fulani militants are by far the largest perpetrators of violence against Christians in Nigeria. The Trump Administration has made historic progress against Boko Haram and ISWAP, but we must also stop the killing in the Middle Belt at the hands of the Fulani if we want to ensure our brothers and sisters in Christ are safe to live and worship without being murdered.”
Without stronger protection for religious minorities and serious efforts to address youth marginalization, Nigeria risks normalizing a reality in which practicing one’s faith can be a death sentence. The toll tens of thousands dead or abducted, communities destroyed, and clergy hunted demands urgent action from Nigerian leaders, the Trump administration and the international community.
• Dede Laugesen is president and CEO of Save the Persecuted Christians, a U.S. educational nonprofit based in Monument, Colorado. For more information, contact info@savethepersecutedchristians.org.
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