Militant Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria slaughtered 50 Christians between Nov. 24 and Dec. 6, including women and children on their way to church, according to multiple news reports.
On Nov. 24 alone, more than 300 Fulani herdsmen, a predominantly Muslim group known to terrorize Christians, attacked the largely Christian counties of Logo and Katsina-Ala. The herdsmen, who reportedly shot anyone in sight, killed 30 residents while wounding 37 others. A week later, Fulani herdsmen killed 18 Christians on their way to church.
According to Benjamin Uzenda, a former member of the Logo Local Government Council, the herdsmen were “armed with deadly weapons, shot sporadically on the Christians, butchered some victims with machetes, and destroyed their crops on farmlands,” Morning Star News (MSN) reported.
Targeted attacks also occurred on Dec. 6 when a gunman entered a young Christian woman’s home and shot her in the stomach while she was studying for an exam. The same day, attackers killed a pastor in his home.
Over 7,000 Christians are estimated to have been killed in 2023, and the slaughtering has continued since January. It includes the murder of Reverend Manasseh Ibrahim, who was traveling to minister to church members when he was ambushed and shot to death, according to MSN.
In August, the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa published a report recounting the religious persecution in Nigeria between 2019-2023. The report discovered 56,000 people in Nigeria died because of ethnic and religious violence over four years, and Christians were disproportionately victims. Of 56,000, 30,880 were civilians, 16,769 of which were Christians while 6,235 were Muslims. Christians were 6.5 times more likely to be killed by the violence and 5.1 times more likely to be abducted.
Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, criticized the Nigerian government for refusing to protect Nigerian Christians.
“The numbers killed and abducted are staggering and the documentation is now irrefutable,” Shea said in an interview with Catholic News Agency. “Fulani militants are waging a religious war, a jihad, against undefended Christian farming communities in large swaths of Nigeria. Equally undeniable and shocking is the fact that the Nigerian government has idly watched and tolerated these relentless attacks over many years. The goal of the militants to eradicate the Christian presence by murder, forcible conversion to Islam, and driving them out of their homeland appears to be shared by the government in Abuja [the capital of Nigeria] or else it would take action.”
Shea also criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s choice in 2021 to remove Nigeria from the watchlist of countries who severely violate religious freedom despite clear evidence.
Open Doors’ World Watch List 2024 labeled Nigeria as the sixth-worst nation where Christian persecution and discrimination persist, finding that more than 82% of Christians killed for their faith globally were in Nigeria. President Donald Trump placed Nigeria on the list in 2016 during his first term. With his return, some expect Nigeria to be placed on the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs) once again.
