The group says the Nigerian government must be called out as a religious freedom violator for turning a blind eye as Islamic terrorists and Fulani tribesman continue slaughtering Christians and burning down their churches and homes.
[UPDATE] More than 30 leaders of Christian organizations have sent a letter to President Donald Trump asking that his administration redesignate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) due to the ongoing slaughter of Christians in the country.
Reportedly more than 56,000 Christians have been killed in the country in the last few years and millions more have been displaced from their homes. Intersociety, a Nigerian human rights NGO, reported that between January 1 and August 10 of this year 7,087 Christians were killed in the country and 7,800 were abducted.
Kidnapping, ransom, rape, and burning of churches and crops by Muslim Fulani tribesmen and terrorist groups like Boko Haram are commonplace.
During Trump’s first term, his administration designated Nigeria as a CPC but that move was undone in President Joe Biden’s first year in office. Throughout the Biden presidency, Nigeria was left off the list despite pleas from religious freedom and human rights groups.
Last week the religious leaders sent their letter urging Trump to once again put Nigeria on the list.
“The last several years have seen a burgeoning of violent attacks specifically targeting rural Christians in the country’s Middle Belt, while the government in Abuja barely lifts a finger to protect them,” the leaders wrote. “U.S. law warrants CPC designation when a country is found to be ‘tolerating’ serious violations of religious freedom, as well as when itself carries out violations. The Nigerian government is directly violating religious freedom by enforcing Islamic blasphemy laws that carry the death penalty and harsh prison sentences against citizens of various religions. It also demonstrably tolerates relentless aggression uniquely against Christian farming families by militant Fulani Muslim herders, who appear intent on forcibly Islamizing the Middle Belt.”
The letter states that 20,000 churches have been attacked and destroyed by Muslim terrorist groups since 2009.
The leaders argue that Nigeria’s government is unwilling to do anything to stop the violence by Fulanis, writing,
“In stark contrast to its fight against northern terror groups, Nigeria’s government allows the militant Fulani herders to attack defenseless Middle Belt Christians with complete impunity. It fails to investigate the Fulanis’ organizational structures and identify who is arming them. The authorities don’t enforce the country’s gun bans against the Fulani. They don’t act to reclaim the stolen farms for their Christian owners, who are instead consigned to destitution in internally displaced camps that receive little, if any, government assistance. They rarely arrest and never convict Fulanis who attack Christians. Even when warned of impending Fulani attacks, government security forces are typically unresponsive or ineffective.”
The letter authors noted that on March 12, Catholic Bishop Wilfred Anagbe testified before the U.S. Congress regarding the violence in his diocese, saying, “The experience of Christians in Nigeria can be summed up as a Church under Islamist extermination.”
Shortly after, Fulani militants attacked the bishop’s home village and killed 12 of his relatives.
In June, Fulani militants attacked a village of displaced refugees and killed over 200 Christians by burning men, women, children, and infants alive.
The genocide is finally starting to gain a small amount of attention in the West.
Recently, commentator Bill Maher, who is hardly a Christian apologist, detailed the genocide of Christians in Africa, calling out media for refusing to cover the story.
“If you don’t know what’s going on in Nigeria, your media sources suck,” Maher said. “You are in a bubble. I’m not a Christian, but they are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria. They’ve killed over 100,000 since 2009. They’ve burned 18,000 churches… They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country. Where are the kids protesting this?”
In September Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx, sponsored a bill that would designate Nigeria as a CPC and impose sanctions on the officials who allow violence against Christians or who enforce sharia laws.
In response, Nigerian leaders have responded with outrage and denied a genocide of Christians, claiming that Cruz and Maher are spreading “misinformation.”
Gima Kakanda, senior special assistant to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu on research and analytics claimed that Maher’s views were “simplistic.”
“Nowhere is there an official policy or plan to eradicate Christians. Nigeria’s conflicts are grim and complex, but they center on terrorism, crime and communal disputes, not religion,” he argued.
Meanwhile foreign minister Yusuf Tuggar said that Nigeria does not allow attacks against Christians.
“We’re going to be 400 million people in the next 25 years, so there will be more contests for farm land and grazing land, mineral resources and water,” he claimed.
He argued this “sometimes produced conflicts between neighboring groups who may be religiously diverse.”
Their claims echo those of the United Nations and Biden administration officials who blamed climate change for the slaughter.
But those claims are strongly rebuffed by Christian residents who live in these areas that have been targeted by militants.
While Nigeria may have no stated policy of targeting Christians nor endorsed Islam as the state religion, it has permitted Sharia law to operate in many of its districts and allowed charges of blasphemy to be levied against citizens.
It has also failed to even slow down the mass killing of Christians.
West Virginia Rep. Riley Moore recently voiced concern that the government may be working to facilitate the massacre.
“We have been training and equipping the Nigerians in the hope that they were going to stop Boko Haram and eliminate them from Nigeria, well that’s not happening. And I think there is a question that there’s a collusion between the current Islamic government in Nigeria and these terrorist organizations that are killing Christians en mass, so what we want is for President Trump to put that designation back in place,” Moore stated.
Video has now emerged of what is allegedly a mass burial of women and children that occurred on October 14 following yet another violent act.
A video reportedly of a Nigerian pastor standing in a mass grave is chilling. The pastor emotionally expressed that they are performing burials every day.
He called out the Nigerian government for saying there was no genocide of Christians, then pointed to the bodies and said, “Look at it today!”
He pled with the United Nations, the U.S. Senate, and the Trump administration to help.
“Tell Trump to save our lives in Nigeria!” he shouted. “They are killing Christians in Nigeria! Massacre Christians. If they say, ‘They kill Muslims, Muslims are being killed.’ By who? By Muslims!”
The authors of the letter to Trump argue that if the administration is concerned about imposing sanctions on Nigeria, a CPC designation does not require the United States to sanction a foreign government.
They wrote that the “IRF Act does not mandate automatic sanctions and, moreover, provides for a sanctions waiver and cites a range of other possible policy responses.”
But whether the administration chooses to impose sanctions or not, the religious leaders believe more must be done.
“We believe that, after nearly five years of simply ‘watching’ the arrest of individuals on harsh blasphemy charges and the relentless massacre and persecution of defenseless Christians solely for their faith, assigning only Special Watch List status would be a weak and legally inadequate response,” they argued. “Such a move would dishonor religious freedom as a core pillar of U.S. foreign policy and further reinforce the previous administration’s downgrade and sidelining of the targeted killing of Christians.”
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Nigeria’s Unending Nightmare
{Published June 24, 2025} Islamic Fulani tribesmen have carried out yet another brutal massacre on Christians in Nigeria, this time killing an estimated 200 people. The atrocity followed days of escalating violence and renewed pleas from Christian leaders to recognize the ongoing genocide taking place in Nigeria over the last several years.
Late on the night of June 13 and into the early morning, a group of Islamic Fulani tribesmen attacked Yelwata, a predominantly Christian village in the Benue state. The village serves as a mission site for internally displaced people (IDP) as millions of Nigerians have been forced from their homes in the last few years due to Islamic terror groups.
Earlier that night, the Fulani militants tried to storm St. Joseph’s Church where up to 700 IDPs were sleeping. The police intervened and repelled the attack. The assailants then turned to the market square and attacked shops, stalls, homes, and makeshift shelters housing displaced families. The militants soaked buildings in gasoline and set them ablaze, burning many of their victims alive.
Those who tried to escape were shot or hacked with machetes. Men, women, children, and even infants were among the dead.
Matthew Mnyam, a community leader, said entire families were “wiped out.”
“A man, his two wives, and all their children were burned alive. It was a well-coordinated assault from both eastern and western flanks of the community.”
Yelwata had been considered a relatively safe location following attacks in nearby towns, and thousands of IDPs sought refuge there. Tragically that sense of safety was crushed in one night.
According to Yelwata’s parish priest, Father Ukuma Jonathan Angbianbee, the militants carefully coordinated the attack, using heavy rains as cover while converging on the village from multiple angles.
“There is no question about who carried out the attack,” he said. They were definitely Fulanis. They were shouting ‘Allahu Akhbar.’”
The massacre followed days of attacks by Fulani tribesmen in the Benue and Plateau states. On June 11, Fulani tribesmen attacked Christian farmers in Rigwe Chiefdom, killing four, including Musa Chega, Gali, and 25-year-old Uhwie Emmanuel and her 9-month-old daughter, Mary.
The Fulani have staged multiple ambushes in Rigwe this month killing at least 10 and wounding others.
For years, Christian farmers in Nigeria have endured unrelenting violence from Islamic Fulani militants and terrorist groups like Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
According to findings by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, at least 55,910 Christians were killed between October 2019 and September 2023.
The Nigerian nongovernmental organization Intersociety reported that 8,222 Christians were martyred from January 2023 to January 2024.
Meanwhile, the Observatory estimates that approximately 21,000 Christians had been taken by terrorist groups.
In fact, mass kidnapping people for ransom is another terrorist tactic that is ravaging Nigeria. In December, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that 2 million people had been kidnapped between May 2023 and April 2024. It is estimated that families have paid $1.42 billion in ransom.
The horrifying statistics reflect the ongoing grief of a country overrun by Islamic terrorism and lawlessness.
For years, Nigerian Christians have called on their government — and the world — to wake up to their plight. But Nigerian academics and Western officials continue to frame the violence as a land dispute, allegedly driven by climate change.
Christians in Nigeria reject that narrative. They insist that it is not a land dispute but a religiously motivated genocide.
“Christians are being slaughtered in a gruesome manner in Nigeria’s middle belt where Christians predominate, and unfortunately, nothing is happening [to protect them],” said Micheel Odeh James of Truth Nigeria, in an interview with CBN News.
James argues the genocide is not being covered for political reasons.
“The previous government that’s under Muhammad Buhari, who is a Fulani man, passed the killings off as ‘farmers clash,’ but when we defined it as ‘genocidal killing prompted by land grabbing,’ they get angry,” he stated. “So they started suppressing the press from carrying out the report of these killings. A new president has come and he has (only) liberalized the space and that is why you can see to a certain extent the media are carrying it halfheartedly.”
In March, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa approved measures urging President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on Nigeria.
Committee Chairman Chris Smith, R-N.J., stated at the time, “Militant Fulani herdsmen are terrorists. They steal and vandalize, they kill and boast about it, they kidnap and rape, and they enjoy total impunity from elected officials. None of them have been arrested or brought to justice.”
“Make no mistake — these attacks are religiously motivated. Denying this reality contradicts the overwhelming evidence we have seen,” the committee added in its report. “This ‘religious cleansing’ must stop, and those responsible must be held accountable.”
According to Truth Nigeria, the paramount ruler of the Tiv tribe challenged Nigerian government officials at a townhall meeting last week. That leader, James Francis Ayatse, said,
“It’s not herders-farmers clashes, not communal clashes or reprisal attacks. It is a calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land grabbing campaign by herder terrorists and bandits. Wrong diagnosis will always lead to wrong treatment. This is war.”
Ayatse is right: Addressing the violence in Nigeria starts with recognizing the truth. Nigeria’s government has proven that they are either unable or unwilling to protect its people. There is a genocide taking place against Nigeria’s Christians as Fulani tribesmen continue to attack the most helpless among them.
This is clearly not a land dispute caused by climate change as the “experts” claim.
Only after leaders recognize that truth can a solution be reached.
In a bizarre move, the Biden administration removed Nigeria from the State Department’s Countries of Particular Concern list of nations that violate religious freedom. Throughout the entirety of the Biden presidency, Nigeria was never once placed on the list despite an increase in the instances of slaughter.
Also, Numerous Nigerian states have blasphemy laws that allow supposed offenders to be arrested and even executed for violating Sharia law.
Smith chastised the Biden administration for removing Nigeria from the State Department’s CPC list, “despite overwhelming evidence that religious persecution had worsened. This decision ignored the repeated recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.”
Smith said he expected Trump to place Nigeria back on the list and take steps to help the persecuted.
What those steps might be is unclear, but it is likely that the administration will put Nigeria back on the watchlist and may even impose sanctions.
The question world leaders have to answer is whether Nigeria’s government is largely unable to halt the violence or if they primarily refuse to stop it.
Once they answer that, they must decide what to do about it.
Surely thousands of Christians being martyred, millions forced to flee, and millions forcefully taken where they often face torture, brainwashing, or death is not something the world can or should turn a blind eye to.
However, that seems to be what the world has largely done.
As eyes focus on Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran, the violence in Nigeria has mostly been uncovered.
We expect that the Trump administration will champion religious freedom around the world, but how it chooses to deal with Nigeria is still unknown.
But this violence must be called out for what it is: a religiously motivated genocide.
As Christians, we must pray for our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, asking God to protect them, thwart their enemies, and give them the providential strength they need to endure.
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