Reporting on violence against Christians in Nigeria is slim. Christianity Today has covered some attacks. The BBC did a story in 2022. Newsweek recently published an opinion piece. It is difficult to find reports or stories of persecution in Nigeria. Christians are being killed in Nigeria, and few people are even noticing. The United States government is turning a blind eye. Of the 15 years that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended Nigeria be designated a Country of Particular Concern, the U.S. State Department has only accepted its recommendation once, in 2020. Nigeria was removed in 2021 and has not been listed since. No wonder the call is to hear the stories.

In 2019, Alheri Magaji spoke about her Adara community in Kaduna State of Nigeria during an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. She told the audience about how her ethnic group suffered vicious attacks carried out from mid-February through April of that year that left about 400 dead and displaced thousands in her community.

“I spoke to a woman whose limbs were cut off. She had four kids and was nine months pregnant,” said Magaji. “Fulani herdsmen came to a Kajuru town in February, about 400 of them with AK-47s. They came at around 6:30 a.m. They spoke Adara. They came in with war songs. They were singing songs that translate into, ‘The owners of the land have come. It’s time for settlers to leave.’”

“We are here today to beg the U.S. government and for the world to hear our story,” she continued.

On my shelf is a book I bought at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, titled “The World Must Know.” Atrocities cry out to be known like Abel’s blood crying out to God from the ground (Gen. 4:10). I’ve always felt a responsibility to know when atrocities are occurring around the world. On this topic, you can find books on North Korea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You can find an avalanche of articles on Gaza and Ukraine, but Nigeria? Not so much. This is shameful. Not only are atrocities occurring in Nigeria, but they are happening to brothers and sisters in Christ. I feel a burden to spread the word about Nigeria.

What’s Going On

Sadly, many could not even identify Nigeria on a map. In West Africa, the sixth most populated country in the world, Nigeria is ground zero for violence against Christians.

When Open Doors USA released its 2024 World Watch List this past January, they reported 4,998 Christians were killed around the world in 2023. About 9 out of 10 of those Christians killed were in Nigeria. This is a conservative count. The Nigerian-based International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) reports that at least 8,222 Christians were killed across Nigeria from January 2023 to January 2024. That is an increase from the 5,068 Christians in Nigeria killed in 2022, not to mention the wounded, the abducted, or the displaced.

Read More