In the latest atrocity to inflict the troubled African nation of Nigeria, at least 30 people were killed by gunmen in the mostly Christian city of Jos during the evening hours of Palm Sunday. Although the gunmen have yet to be officially identified, witnesses say they appeared to be jihadists affiliated with either Boko Haram or Fulani. Islamist terrorists have been responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Christians in Nigeria while the country’s government does little to combat the ongoing crisis.
The attack targeted a university community in the capital city of Nigeria’s central Plateau State, which has been the site of countless attacks against Christians over the last decade and a half. The same day, a separate attack in neighboring Kaduna State killed at least 13 after gunmen stormed a bachelor’s party. It is estimated that over 60,000 Christians have been murdered by Islamist extremists in the country since 2009, easily accounting for the largest share of Christians killed for their faith of any nation in the world.
“Typically, … these attacks [are carried out by] Fulani militants — a Muslim majority tribe in Nigeria and other parts of Africa,” explained Family Research Council’s director of the Center for Religious Liberty, Arielle Del Turco, during Monday’s Washington Watch. “They will storm into a village typically in the middle of the night, often on motorcycles, extremely fast and hard to track from the military, and just slaughter villages. They’ll take people for ransom and kidnap them. They’ll commit all sorts of horrific crimes. So this latest incident is … another of these Fulani attacks that we’ve seen in Nigeria for years now.”
Del Turco went on to describe what she saw during a recent trip to Nigeria’s Plateau State. “I got to speak with many victims who have survived these attacks — women whose husbands or sons or brothers have been killed, people who have been raped in these attacks. We met with one woman and visited her house, and she described what these attacks were like. Her village was unfortunately targeted routinely by attacks, and she said what she did is … just stay in her house with her doors locked and pray, even though she knows that these door locks can’t stop the Fulani militants if they choose to target her house. So that’s the reality that so many of these people are living in, and they don’t really have the means to move. … I was shocked by just how matter-of-factly some of these people would talk about these attacks, but I think that’s because they’ve been going on for so long. It’s a part of their normal life now, sadly.”
The ongoing slaughter has gotten the attention of the Trump administration after years of being shrugged off during Joe Biden’s presidency. In October of last year, Trump’s Department of State redesignated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern. Months later, on Christmas Day, the U.S. military struck ISIS-linked targets in northern Nigeria with 16 Tomahawk missiles after the country’s government requested the assistance. The Trump administration followed up the strike by sending 200 U.S. troops to Nigeria in February to assist in anti-terror training of the nation’s military.
“I think that really woke up the Nigerian government to be like, ‘Hey, this isn’t just a domestic issue that’s always going to happen, and we don’t really want to address,’” Del Turco remarked. “… [W]e really need to see more concentration from Western governments who are able to help advise the Nigerian government on security matters, on justice matters. We see routinely that these attackers don’t face any sort of punishment by the justice system. So there’s a lot that Western governments can be helping the Nigerian government on right now.”
Following a pattern after Islamist attacks, Nigeria’s government condemned the violence but made no arrests of the perpetrators. In recent days, Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has made token efforts to show his country is addressing the crisis by donating his salary to a fund that will go toward helping wounded soldiers and the families of those killed in the line of duty. The nation has also increased its military spending, recently rolling out a new fleet of armored vehicles designed for rapid response during counter-insurgency missions.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is continuing to ramp up pressure on Nigeria’s leadership to more effectively engage and combat the Islamist jihadi groups that are continuing to wreak havoc in the country’s central and northern regions.
“This has been brought to the top of the State Department’s priority list,” Del Turco emphasized. “That’s really good. And President Trump is reviewing the recommendations that he asked Rep. Riley Moore [R-W.Va.] to compile. So we’re seeing a lot of encouraging movement on this issue. Now we really just need to see what actions President Trump is going to take, and maybe some of those will be private with the Nigerian government. But we’re really waiting to see how that plan is going to unfold.”
