Open Doors: Every Two Hours a Nigerian Christian Is Killed for ‘Following Jesus’

A woman cries while trying to console a woman who lost her husband during the funeral serv
UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

The Christian aid group Open Doors revealed Wednesday a Christian is violently killed for their faith in Nigeria every two hours on average, 365 days a year.

“That’s nearly 13 people a day, 372 a month and almost 5,000 a year,” writes Lindy Lowry, the managing editor for Open Doors USA, in an email. “And the reality is that each of these numbers is a man, woman, father, mother, son or daughter.”

“Research for the 2022 World Watch List reveals that in Nigeria, more Christians were murdered for their faith than in any other country,” Lowry writes, adding that “Nigeria accounted for nearly 80% of Christian deaths worldwide.”

These data confirm that currently Nigeria is “the world’s most violent place for Christians,” the message states. “Believers live each hour under threat of attack, kidnapping or death from Islamic extremist groups — simply because they walk with Jesus.”

The year 2021 was particularly dire for Nigerian Christians. As Breitbart News reported, in the first 200 days of 2021 at least 3,462 Christians were murdered by Islamists in Nigeria, while some 3,000 Christians — many of them girls and young women — were kidnapped during the same period.

The Nigeria-based International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, which tallied the anti-Christian violence in the country from January 1 to July 18, 2021, noted that “the Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen are responsible for majority of the killings with at least 1,909 Christian deaths in 200 days, followed by Boko Haram, ISWAP and Muslim Fulani Bandits who jointly killed 1,063 Christians.”

Mourners attend the funeral of 43 farm workers in Zabarmari, about 20km from Maiduguri, Nigeria, on November 29, 2020 after they were killed by Boko Haram fighters in rice fields near the village of Koshobe on November 28, 2020. - The assailants tied up the agricultural workers and slit their throats in the village of Koshobe. The victims were labourers from Sokoto state in northwest Nigeria, roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) away, who had travelled to the northeast to find work. (Photo by Audu Marte / AFP) (Photo by AUDU MARTE/AFP via Getty Images)

Mourners attend the funeral of 43 farm workers in Zabarmari, Nigeria, on November 29, 2020 after they were killed by Boko Haram fighters. The Islamist assailants tied up the agricultural workers and slit their throats. (AUDU MARTE/AFP via Getty Images)

David Curry, the CEO of Open Doors, told Breitbart News in January that “Northern Nigeria is really the epicenter of jihadi violence right now.”

“There’s a band across the African continent, it’s called the Sahel region. It includes northern Nigeria but it goes over into Cameroon, Chad, Burkina Faso, Niger. All of these countries are seeing a giant jump [in anti-Christian violence] because of Boko Haram, which is an ISIS-affiliated group, and the Fulani,” Curry said.

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