In response to President Trump’s threat to deploy the United States military to Nigeria to stop the murderous persecution of Christians that has been transpiring for at least a decade, Nigerian officials have emphatically denied that there is anything like a Christian genocide occurring in their land.
Sadly, the historical record is replete with more than a handful of genocides. “Genocide” is indeed a meaningful term. Yet precisely because it’s also one from which political partisans have gotten their fair share of mileage, claims of genocide must be attended to with care.
For example, Israel’s most vocal and vigorous critics have been insisting for the better part of two years that Israel is committing a “genocide” against the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s defenders, while not denying (the undeniable fact) that Israel has indeed killed tens of thousands of Gazans, staunchly reject the characterization of this killing as “genocidal.”
In the final analysis, though, whether a mass killing of a demographic is “genocidal” or not, if it’s murderous—i.e., unjustified—it’s, to put it mildly, a problem. It’s a crime against humanity, as we say.
While numbers are not always easy to obtain, and while estimates vary, human rights organizations and persecution watch groups agree that from 2009 to April of 2023, a minimum of 50,000 Nigerian Christians, and possibly as many as 60,000 since 2000, were killed. Just this year alone, from January to August, 7,000 Christians lost their lives. Of the number of Christians murdered globally for their faith, 80% of them occur in Nigeria.
And while murder is murder, it’s important to note that these Christians aren’t being obliterated by missiles from a distance. They are being murdered up close and personally by Islamic militants who hunt them with rifles and, literally, burn them alive. Whole hillsides, the lands of the Christian farming communities targeted, have been torched and churches—more than 9,000—have been set aflame as well. Most of the violence occurs in Nigeria’s northern states and Middle Belt (though violence against the majority Christian population in the south has been on the rise within recent years).
Of Nigeria’s 106.6 million Christians, about 3.3 million were driven from their homes and are now IDPs (Internally Displaced Peoples). Ten thousand Christian schools in Northern Nigeria have been shut down.
Upon killing their men, members of such Islamic terrorist groups as Boko Haram, ISIS-West Africa, Ansaru, Fulani herdsmen, and Lakurawa typically abduct the women and girls. In captivity, these females, who had to watch as their husbands, fathers, grandfathers, brothers, and sons were murdered in cold blood, are repeatedly subjected to sexual assault. They are also sexually trafficked. The younger girls are not infrequently impregnated by their captors, made to become their wives, and, it should go without saying, convert to Islam.
According to reports, any Christian who is interpreted as paying undue respect to Muhammad or Islam can be killed at that instant, and even the names of Christians—names from the Bible—function as targets on their backs.
Given the relationship between the United States and Israel, it’s understandable that, as far as international news is concerned, the media focus for the last two years has been on the situation in Gaza. That being said, lest myopia set in, it’s crucial to remember that world events are not limited to this one conflict.
To judge from the tireless exchanges between the most impassioned pro-Israel and pro-Palestine partisans over the last two years, one could be forgiven for thinking that Jews and Muslims are the most persecuted religious groups in the world. The truth of the matter, however, is that it is Christians who hold this unenviable distinction. And if there could be said to be a ground zero for global Christian persecution, Nigeria is it.
It’s a good thing that the rest of the world may now begin to realize this.