Nigeria holds a grim distinction. According to Open Doors, 80 percent of all violence against Christians worldwide occurs within its borders. More than 50,000 have been killed over the past decade and a half. The attacks are relentless, documented, and accelerating.
On Christmas Day 2025, the United States bombed Islamic State West Africa Province positions in northern Nigeria. The Trump administration cited protection of Christians as the justification and designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for severe religious freedom violations. The strikes made global headlines. What happened next got far less attention.
In January, armed militants simultaneously raided three churches in the Kajuru area of Kaduna state during Sunday services. They grabbed 163 worshippers at gunpoint — men, women, and children — and marched them into the bush. No group claimed responsibility, but witnesses identified the attackers as Fulani militants. The abducted were released in early February after what local officials described as negotiations. Ransom details were not disclosed.
Days later, a separate attack in Kwara state killed 162 people in the Muslim-majority villages of Woro and Nuku. Many victims reportedly died for resisting extremist ideology. Amnesty International called it “a stunning security failure.” That attack drew less international attention because the victims were Muslim.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies published an analysis in late January noting that jihadist infiltration into northwest Nigeria is “relatively recent” and accounts for less of the region’s violence than farmer-herder conflict and banditry. The distinction matters. The Christmas strikes targeted ISWAP positions in the northeast. The worst violence against Christians is concentrated in the Middle Belt — Benue, Plateau, and Kaduna states — where Fulani militants operate in a different pattern with different networks.
The UN’s top humanitarian official in Nigeria pushed back against framing the crisis as exclusively anti-Christian. Mohamed Malik Fall told UN News that “insecurity affects everyone, without distinction of religion or ethnicity,” pointing to a Christmas Eve mosque bombing in Maiduguri that killed Muslim worshippers. He warned that oversimplified narratives risk deepening fractures rather than addressing causes.
The numbers tell a more complicated story. The Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa found that Christians in northern Nigeria are 6.5 times more likely to be killed than Muslims. They are 5.1 times more likely to be abducted. The violence is disproportionate, even if it is not exclusive.
Meanwhile, 7.2 million people in northeastern Nigeria need humanitarian assistance. Annual funding once approached $1 billion. This year, it may not reach $200 million. The bombs fell. The headlines moved on. The killing didn’t stop.
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