A murderous campaign of Islamist militants against Christians and non-conforming Muslims in Nigeria by various jihadic groups seems to have accelerated this spring. Earlier articles (here, here, here, and here) have reported what has been happening in recent years. A staggering 52,000 Christians have been killed since 2009, and 18,000 churches set on fire, yet somehow this remains under the radar of public consciousness in America and elsewhere in the West. The situation cries out for all action that can reasonably be taken.
The Recent Spate of Killings
While it seems that killing and destruction of property is going on all the time, Christian holidays are especially likely to be times of attack. In past years, attacks occurred on Christmas and Pentecost; this year an attack on Palm Sunday killed 40 people in Zikke village in Plateau State in north-central Nigeria. Another report from Christian News Network said this followed a total of 60 killed Plateau State earlier in April. The report also updated the killing in Zikke to 51, while Open Doors ministry finds the number of people killed in the recent spate of attacks in Plateau State at 113 (including 3 farmers tilling their land, and mourners at a funeral). On April 6, five women were killed who “gathered for fellowship.” Open Doors also noted that in the Zikke attack, houses were burned with people inside (which also has occurred in Nigeria at other times and places in the silent Nigerian genocide).
Joseph Chudu Yonkpa, a community leader in the affected Miango District of Plateau State, condemned the lack of state action. “We are deeply concerned about the silence of state actors, the lack of condemnation, and the absence of intervention or visitation to our people … We are particularly worried about the lack of action taken to arrest the perpetrators of these heinous crimes as they continue to kill our people on daily basis,” he said.
In another attack on April 13 (Palm Sunday), Fulani herdsmen killed 10 Christians in Benue State, including children as young as 5 years old, and people who had returned to their homes in the evening following work on their farms. The people killed had both bullet wounds and machete cuts (machete attacks are, sadly, not uncommon in the Nigerian persecution). Citing a British All-Parliamentary Report on Freedom of Religion and Belief on religious freedom, the Christian News Network pointed out that Fulani who hold Islamist ideology (currently more prominent in the persecution than either Boko Haram or Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP)) “adopt a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity.” This is consistent with the Islamization objective stated by former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari, himself a Muslim Fulani, in 2001, long before he became president (2015-2023).
Easter brought fresh attacks, with communities in Benue State attacked on April 17 and 18 (Maundy Thursday and Good Friday). The body count of people pulled from bushes came to 72. While the governor of Benue expressed outrage, law enforcement is ultimately up to the federal government, which controls both the army and police. “They come, they drag people out, they kill to occupy,” he said. A demonstration in neighboring Plateau State protested the killings on Palm Sunday and earlier in April, and the lack of protection of citizens from the government. Reverend Amos Mozho, Chairman of the Denominational Leaders Forum in the state, said “we are tired of mass burials. Enough is enough.” He rejected the “farmer/herder clash” thesis and said that “what is unfolding is a coordinated onslaught against the people of Plateau.”
Also the same day (Easter Monday), a truck intentionally rammed an Easter procession, killing six Christians and hospitalizing 30 in Gombe State in northeast Nigeria. Witnesses said that “as soon as the Muslim driver saw the crowd of Christians ahead of him, he increased his speed and ran into the group from behind them without ever honking his horn.” The driver had no difficulty stopping the vehicle, however, and ran to police observing the incident, who then put him in a police vehicle, and drove away, leaving dead and wounded behind, some trapped under the heavy truck. The driver was ultimately charged, but other incidents of Muslim drivers ramming groups of Christians have occurred in the area in the past.
There is very limited government control in parts of the north of Nigeria, where sharia law prevails, and murderous raids, “roadblock killings,” rape, and abductions for enormous ransom (likely considered a form of “jizya” or protection tax on infidels) are rampant.
As noted below, the terror of northern and central Nigeria is spreading to the south. Additionally, a new Muslim extremist group, Lakurawa, has appeared in northwest Nigeria.
Historical Background of the Violence of Recent Years
The intent to subjugate and Islamize the south of Nigeria, and really the whole area from the Sahara Desert south to the Atlantic, was, as noted in an earlier article (2018) by Faith McDonnell, rooted in the Sokoto Caliphate in northwest Nigeria early in the nineteenth century. It’s ruler, Usman dan Fodio, wanted strict Sunni Islam enforced in the area of what would be northern Nigeria and Cameroon. His great grandson, Sir Ahmadu Bello, premier of the northern Nigeria region, declared at Nigerian independence (1960) the desire to dominate Nigeria south to the Atlantic, an objective made easier by the British reliance on the Fulani and northern Muslims to rule the country, as was pointed out by Jeff King of International Christian Concern in this writer’s 2024 article. It was also made easier by the continuation of the traditional authorities in the north of Nigeria under the system of “indirect rule.” Although the British remained the ultimate authority, the Fulani and Hausa tribes of the north continued to dominate that area, and the aspiration of dominance to the south evidently remained. And also, as noted in the 2018 article, the Fulani militants have external support, at that time by alliance with Sudan’s Islamist government and reputedly from the Gulf states and Turkey. Finally, there is the Western infatuation with the ideas of climate change driving desertification of the Sahel and moral equivalence (at least where Western elites prefer not to see a side of justice which does not fit their narratives).
Since independence in 1960, the history of Nigeria has been one of initial democracy, followed largely by coups and dictatorship in the twentieth century, followed by a return to democracy in 1999. The Islamist Boko Haram terrorism campaign began in earnest in 2010 and has been supplemented by the breakaway Islamic State Southwest Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorist group, and in recent years has been overshadowed by militant Fulani groups, particularly Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN). (Boko Haram reportedly means “Western civilization forbidden,” rather than the often quoted “Western education forbidden”). As noted in this writer’s 2021 article, former President Muhammadu Buhari, himself a Fulani, ensured that heads of government agencies were Muslims, and the police are centralized under federal government control, so even if state governors would like to act to protect rural communities, they cannot legally use coercive force. Citizen guards have arisen to protect especially vulnerable communities, but even they have been, at times, disarmed.
Bishop Anagbe’s Testimony
The House Congressional Subcommittee on Africa held hearings on March 12 concerning religious persecution in Nigeria, which were reported the following day by TruthNigeria, a project of Equipping the Persecuted. TruthNigeria focused on kidnapping, which, consistent with former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Robert Destro’s comments in the 2021 article, is a severe problem, and in one Nigerian County alone involved 768 kidnappings in the last 14 months. Prisoners are tortured and shot if exorbitant ransoms are not paid, which then have the effect of impoverishing Christian communities and (where clergy are involved) Christian congregations.
Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe of the Catholic Makurdi Diocese, also testified before the subcommittee, saying the violence is part of a long-term Islamist agenda to homogenize the population “through a strategy to reduce and eventually eliminate the Christian identity of half of the population.” The bishop, who has seen the closure of 15 parishes in his diocese, and others elsewhere, pointed out that there are 2,000,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps in Nigeria due to the slaughter and violence, and that these persons “have nowhere to go” (in addition to being not supported by the state). He said that there are 9 IDP camps in his diocese alone and inmates there cannot return to their ancestral lands, because these are now occupied by Fulani militia. The only just and practical solution is to remove the invading Fulani, but that would require Nigerian federal government action. But what is happening instead is that even in the IDP camps people are at times attacked.
Anagbe said that Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam, as desertification has made it difficult for them to sustain their herds.
“The situation for Christians in Nigeria today can be summed up as a that of a church under Islamic, Islamist extermination. It is frightening to live there.” Imposition of Sharia law has occurred in six states in the north of Nigeria and Islamist Council of Nigeria wants Sharia imposed on the south, as well. “We live in fear, because at any point, it can be our turn to be killed, but to remain silent is to die twice … I speak on behalf of the millions who are in the camp.” He said that his flock cannot “worship freely” in this environment of fear and death, and many cannot “return to their ancestral farms and homes” because the land has been seized by the armed extremist groups. The jihadists alternatively demand taxes (jizya) for the native peoples to farm their ancestral lands. He pointed out that civil war in Nigeria would result in millions of refugees pouring into surrounding countries which cannot accommodate them.
Bishop Anagbe said that America can have Nigeria as an ally but must deal with the country on the basis of “unalienable human rights” that people everywhere have. It cannot be at the expense of half of the population in Nigeria “which is being murderously eliminated.” Their interests, he said, have “been set aside by U.S. policy for too long at the cost of thousands of lives.”
Reinstating Nigeria’s status as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, he said, would have “both a practical and diplomatic meaning, to signal that you are paying attention to what happens to us.” The Nigerian government’s policy of putting formerly self-supporting farmers in camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) rather than allowing them to return to their homes and farms the Islamic militants have taken over and renamed is wrong and should be a crucial issue in America’s relations with Nigeria. He observed that Nigeria was able to restore order in Liberia in 1990, leading the Economic Community Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), and can certainly restore order in its own country. The problem, Anagbe said, is not just a conspiracy of silence, but government complicity with the terrorists.
“This strategy includes both violent and nonviolent actions such as the exclusion of Christians from positions of power,” Anagbe said. “The raping of women, the killing and expulsion of Christians, the destruction of churches and farmlands of Christian farmers followed by the occupation of such lands by the Fulani raiders and also changing the names of these villages they’re taking over.”
Bishop Anagbe’s testimony met with immediate counter-attack from Muslim sources, which attacked the credibility of his remarks and claims of government complicity in the persecution of Christians. Typical of similar rhetoric in the West when a desired narrative is contradicted (here the farmer/herder conflict thesis) truth is held to be inflammatory. But two Christian leaders in Nigeria courageously supported him, as the linked article reports, observing that he was simply stating facts (such as those reported in great statistical detail by the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa). A summary of the four year (2019-2023) report can be found here.
Further observations on the religious freedom situation in Nigeria today are offered in a subsequent article here.
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