Nigerian activists and leaders at the front lines of the jihadist mass killings in the country denounced attempts to erase the religious aspect of the persecution in the country during a recent online press briefing alongside the human rights organization Open Doors, noting the overwhelming evidence that the killers are seeking to eliminate Christianity entirely.
“Anyone who has spoken about climate change, who is talking about land, talking about – no, no, no, no,” Terwase Orbunde, former Chief of Staff to the Governor of Benue State and member of State Security Council, told reporters during the briefing, which took place on December 16 and which Breitbart News attended. “That may be ultimately what they want to do, to take the land, but first is to destroy the people – and because they are Christians. We cannot separate [that] fact.”
Another speaker, journalist Steven Kefas with the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, noted that he had documented terrorist attacks targeting civilians more often on Sundays and Christian holidays, with no corresponding spike in attacks during Islamic holidays. Kefas also noted that a disproportionate number of Christians die in “bandit” attacks even in majority-Muslim Nigerian states, casting doubt on claims that the jihadist killings are part of a generalized crime wave affecting everyone equally.
Children, who were released after being kidnapped by gunmen in Kuriga, are reunited with their families in Kuriga on March 28, 2024. Over 130 Nigerian schoolchildren freed following a mass kidnapping have reunited with their families on March 28, 2024, a state governor’s spokesperson told AFP. (EMMANUEL BUBA/AFP via Getty Images)
“If this just random criminality, why not attack the Muslims in the Middle Belt on the eve of their celebration, or on Friday?” he asked. “You never hear that.”
Nigeria has experienced over a decade of radical Islamist violence, mostly targeting Christians though occasionally also killing Muslims considered insufficiently devout or practitioners of traditional African religions. In northern Nigeria, where the population is majority Muslim, the most persistent threat has been the Islamic State affiliated terrorist organization Boko Haram. In the Middle Belt, which straddles the north and the Christian-majority south, Christian communities have been ravaged by massacres at the hands of organized Fulani jihadists. Government officials and mainstream journalists often refer to the killers vaguely as “bandits” or “gunmen.” Some have dismissed the fighting as conflict between the mostly Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers over land – or a conflict attributable to climate change.
The issue of Christian persecution in Nigeria became an international topic of discussion in October, when President Donald Trump announced that he would place Nigeria on the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) for religious freedom. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, a Muslim married to a Christian, denied that any religious intolerance, much less persecution, existed in his country at all, denouncing the designation. After pressure from Christian advocate groups and opposition parties, Tinubu ultimately declared a state of emergency in response to the genocidal assaults, but his administration persisted in describing the attacks as indiscriminate violence by “gunmen.”
In the months following the CPC designation, reports have surfaced accusing the Nigerian military of threatening the victims of jihad into silence and physically attacking those who continue to protest. As Christmas approached, Christians in the country lamented the possibility of an increase in the killings in anticipation of the holiday.
“The festive period are one of the times they like to attack the communities,” Kefas, the journalist, explained, describing Christmas Eve attacks where entire families were “killed in the most brutal manner.”
“In the last ten years, I’ve also discovered that most of the attacks in the Middle Belt take place on Sunday, it’s something I’ve documented personally: most of the attacks take place on Sunday or an eve to a particular Christian festival,” Kefas explained.
A ceremony is being held on the occasion of Good Friday, the day commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, a day before Easter in Abuja, Nigeria on March 29, 2024. (Photo by Emmanuel Osodi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Orbunde noted that, in Benue state, in the heart of the Middle Belt, “it’s obvious who the attackers are.”
“They are attacking, they are saying ‘allahu akbar, allahu akbar‘ – that gives you a sense of the religion, and the people they are attacking are Christians,” Orbunde explained. “The victims are Christians.”
Human rights attorney Jabez Musa, who also spoke at the Open Doors briefing, described the attackers in the Middle Belt as “militant Fulani who operate as a militia” and quoted a witness who lamented, “these are not clashes, they are obliteration.” He noted that Muslims also die in these attacks, but not indiscriminately.
“We are seeing instances where Muslims are killed … those Muslims are what they called kaffir, a kaffir is a person who does not buy into their ideology,” Musa explained. “Yes, Muslims are also being killed, but the question to ask is: who is killing them? Is the answer Christians?”
Musa also accused the Nigerian government of doing little to protect Christians.
“In most cases, intervention by the Nigerian troops comes late or does not come at all,” Musa explained. “Nigerian Christians are praying to God for divine intervention so that the killings would stop. They are asking their brothers and sisters globally to not only pray with them but also to put pressure on their governments … to muster the political will to protect Christians from the attacks and hold the attackers accountable.”
Musa repeatedly referred to the Nigerian government’s response to the CPC designation from the United States as “window-dressing” intended to indicate concern without any concrete action.
Kefas offered a similar assessment.
“Why are the criminals not in prison standing trial for their crimes, but then we have cases where Christian leaders, journalists who attempt to speak about the atrocities, are sent to jail?” he asked. “I think the government has shown over time that it is either directly or indirectly complicit in what is happening by the fact that the government has not been able to arrest these criminals which we know are jihadists, terrorists … the government has been sheidling these terrorists at least in the past 25 years.”
Open Doors ranks Nigeria as the seventh most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, outranked only by a small class of countries including the world’s most repressive regimes, such as North Korea and Yemen. Speaking to Breitbart News in November, the CEO of Open Doors, Ryan Brown, estimated that Christians in Nigeria experience an average of eight attacks a day.