Nigeria

Boko Haram/ISWAP

Widespread targeted killings of Christian leaders and ordinary Christians, destruction of churches and Christian businesses and other acts which appear intended to cause large scale migrations, effectively religiously cleansing Northern Nigeria of its non-Muslim population. Both Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have released videos of captured Christians being executed, which appear specifically designed to intimidate Christians into fleeing.

Spread of Boko Haram/ISWAP attacks to Cameroon, Chad, Niger and DRC where religious cleansing of Christian villages is now also happening.

Widespread and large-scale abduction of Christian women and girls, who are frequently raped, forcibly converted to Islam and forced to marry jihadists. The abduction of 276 predominantly Christian school girls from Chibok in 2014 was only one such incident.

Boko Haram announced in 2014 that shari’a allowed the enslavement of non-Muslims becoming the first major group to re-enact this aspect of shari’a.[1] A few months later Islamic State followed suit in the parts of the Middle East they controlled.

Fulani militia

Armed attacks on churches and Christian villages in the Middle Belt by militia composed of Fulani herdsmen – which are now killing more people than Boko Haram attacks and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee from their ancestral lands. The Global Terrorism Index 2015 named the Fulani militia and Boko Haram as two of the world’s five most deadly terrorist groups.[2]

According to the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (OFRA), between October 2019 and September 2024, violence in Nigeria led to the death of 36,056 civilians, 47% of which were caused by Fulani militias, making this death toll five times higher than those of Boko Haram and ISWAP combined.[3]

On 2 July 2018 the Nigerian House of Representatives declared killings in the predominantly Christian villages of Plateau State to constitute “genocide” and urged the government to take decisive steps to stop the killings and provide security to communities which had suffered repeated attacks.[4] NB only a minority of Fulani herders in Nigeria are involved in the attacks. 

State actors

Christian leaders have repeatedly claimed in relation to both jihadist and Fulani attacks that Nigerian security forces have failed to protect them when they could have done so, and some members of the security forces have themselves sometimes been complicit in attacks.

In December 2020 Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) stated that the ICC’s preliminary investigation into the situation in Nigeria had concluded that Boko Haram and its splinter groups had committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Other current issues

Significant numbers of Christian villages in the Middle Belt have now been violently seized and occupied by Fulani herders, leading to hundreds of thousands of Christians being forced to flee to other parts of Nigeria. Some of the displaced peoples camps they are living in have also been attacked by Fulani militia.

The perceived inability of the government to prevent such attacks in rural areas has led to a number of retaliatory acts by young men on Muslims and the formation of local militias.

In 2022 attacks by Fulani militias spread to southwest Nigeria, with an attack on a church in Ondo state in which more than 40 worshippers were killed, and at least 60 others injured. The government subsequently claimed ISWAP were responsible, although security experts were unconvinced by this explanation.[6]

The abduction of Christians by criminal gangs, normally referred to as “bandits” is also an increasingly common occurrence, with church services sometimes specifically targeted.[7] On 21 November 2025, 250 children and school staff were abducted from St Mary’s catholic school in Papiri, Niger state. [8]

ISWAP have begun instituting Islamic Courts in the areas they control.[9]

An increasing official Islamisation process is also happening in parallel with this, for example, Kano State is currently seeing an increasing number of Islamic blasphemy prosecutions.[10] On September 1^st, 2025, a woman was burnt to death by a mob in Niger state following blasphemy accusations[11].

Such factors led to widespread fears among Christians when in the run up to the 2023 elections both main parties selected Muslims as their presidential candidates and the governing APC party abandoned the long-standing convention of selecting both a Christian and a Muslim as their candidate for President and Vice President.

Western governments and media organisations have been slow to recognise that Christians are the main religious target of first Boko Haram and now the Fulani attacks. For example, prior to the US State Department’s designation of Boko Haram as a terrorist organisation in November 2013, it had repeatedly been claimed that the violence in Northern Nigeria was primarily driven by socio-economic differences between Christians and Muslims there. Yet just over a year later the Global Terrorism Index listed Boko Haram as the world’s deadliest terrorist organisation.[12]

Similarly, the often repeated claims that Fulani attacks on Christians are primarily driven by climate change creating conflicts over grazing lands, fail to recognise the religious ideology and history behind these attacks and the fact that the victims are overwhelmingly Christians and adherents of African Traditional religions. Such western claims are seen as part of the problem by some victims. For example, Dauda Rogo, headman of Ntiriku village, Kaduna State which Fulani tribesmen attacked in April 2020 killing three Christian women and burning 63 houses said:

“Why did the Fulani leave the Muslims who are farmers and attack only Christians if this is not a religious issue? This is more than grazing land or farmers and herders’ fight over land.”[13]

There therefore appears to be a concerted attempt to downplay the religious or ideological causes both by i) public claims that secondary issues, such as socio-economic issues or conflicts over grazing lands are the primary issues; and ii) ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of victims are either Christians or adherents of African Traditional Religions, while the perpetrators are almost entirely Islamic. This parallels similar attempts at obfuscation when widespread crimes against humanity have occurred elsewhere in recent history.

In March 2023 the Lindisfarne Centre for the Study Christian Persecution produced a research report pointing to evidence that the attacks by Fulani militia on Christians closely parallel the pattern of gazwa raids undertaken by Fulani until 4-5 generations ago and which were specifically justified by Islamic concepts such as jihad and booty taught in Maliki madrassas in West Africa.[14]

Nigerian government has faced international criticism for its lack of ability to protect its Christian population in the north of the country, such as by US Senator Ted Cruz who accused Nigerian of being complicit in the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. Those allegations were later denied by Nigeria’s foreign minister, describing this violence as resource-based across communities and interest groups. [15]

In October 2025, US president Donald Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) regarding religious freedom in the country stating that “Christianity faces an existential threat in Nigeria” and talked about a potential military intervention if the Nigerian government failed to protect Christians[16]. On December 25^th, 2025, the US launched air strikes targeting militants linked to ISWAP in Sokoto state (located in north-western Nigeria, bordering Niger) seemingly killing a significant number of fighters. The exact number of casualties however remains unclear.

Legal situation

The federal constitution

The Nigerian constitution contains an inherent contradiction in that on the one hand it contains statements which positively promote freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to change their religion and the freedom to propagate their religion. It also guarantees religious communities and denominations the freedom to educate their children according to their own beliefs and prohibits compulsory education in any other religion (s.38). It also prohibits any discrimination on the grounds of religion or ethnicity (s.15). Freedom of expression (s.39) and freedom of assembly (s.40) are also specifically guaranteed.

However, the constitution also allows individual states to have both courts based on parliamentary law, shari’a courts and courts dealing with customary law (s.6, 84,185,240,244,247,260-69,275-84), as well as a shari’a court of appeal overseen by a Grand Kadi (i.e. the senior Islamic judge) in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja (s.261-64).

State law and the federal constitution 

The federal constitution also specifically prohibits either the federal or state governments from adopting any religion as the official state religion (s.10); It also contains clauses which would be incompatible with the discriminatory treatment of non-Muslims set out by the main schools of shari’a: s.42 states that:

“A citizen of Nigeria of a particular community, ethnic group, place or origin, sex, religion or political opinion, shall not, by reason only that he is such a person –

a) be subjected, either expressly by, or in the practical application of, any law in force in Nigeria, or an executive or administrative action of the government, to disabilities or restrictions to which citizens of Nigeria of other communities, ethnic groups, places or origin, sex, religions or political opinions are not subjected to.

b) be accorded expressly by, or in the practical application of, any law in force in Nigeria, or an executive or any such administrative action, any privilege or advantage that is not accorded to citizens of Nigeria of any other communities, ethnic groups, places or origin, sex, religions or political opinions.”

The incompatibility of these statements with the constitutional role granted to shari’a courts and the endorsement of shari’a this implies has never been addressed and has been exploited by Islamists. Consequently, in practice very significant violations of all of these constitutional protections have occurred as a result of the implementation of shari’a by state governments in northern Nigeria.

Criminal law

Individual Nigerian states are governed by a combination of parliamentary law, customary law and in northern states, shari’a. At independence in 1960 shari’a courts continued to exist in the North, but a new criminal code replaced their jurisdiction for this area of law. The 1963 constitution was essentially secular, and although permitting the existence of a sharia court of appeal for the North, made it subject to the Supreme Court. However, the move away from religious courts began to come under sustained pressure from the 1970s with campaigns for the implementation of aspects of shari’a at a national level.

In 1999 the governor of Zamfara Province in the Far North was elected on a vaguely worded promise of introducing “religious reforms” and in defiance of the federal constitution immediately introduced full shari’a, for both civil and criminal law with hisbah organisations to enforce it. Eleven other Northern states quickly followed this with broadly similar enactments.[17]

Consequently, while s.204 of the Nigerian Penal Code merely makes “insulting a religion” a criminal offence,[18] in states which have implemented shari’a this is expanded into a specific Islamic blasphemy law.[19]

Nigerian Christians have argued strongly that this enforcement of shari’a violates the federal constitution.

Ideologies linked to persecution

Islamism: Three years after the implementation of shari’a in northern states, Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, (Arabic for: ‘The People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad’), which locals dubbed Boko Haram, was formed. The following year it issued pamphlets calling for Nigeria to become an Islamic state, then declared a jihad, beginning an armed uprising in Yobe state. It appears to have been involved in a 2006 riot supposedly against the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish magazine the previous year. In this 65 Christians were killed and 57 churches destroyed. In 2009, despite making public statements that Christians would be safe, three pastors were murdered, 20 churches and hundreds of Christian businesses were torched. Boko Haram then began openly declaring its intention of driving non-Muslims out of northern Nigeria. The violence also began to spill over into both the Middle Belt states and parts of neighbouring Northern Cameroon, where they have also sought to eradicate Christians. By 2014 Boko Haram was openly declaring it had reimplemented the shari’a provisions allowing enslavement of non-Muslims and used it to justify the abduction of 276 predominantly Christian school girls. In August 2014 it declared a caliphate in the areas it controlled and pledged allegiance to Islamic State, although a year later it split into two groups, one now being called Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). In 2015 the Global Terrorism Index noted that Boko Haram was now the world’s deadliest terrorist group, being responsible for 7,512 deaths, a 300 percent increase on the previous year and more than Islamic state had killed in Iraq and Syria that year. At the same time, state governments in the North are increasingly enforcing strict shari’a including the blasphemy law i.e. the Islamisation process is happening through the actions of both state and non-state actors. There have also been claims of complicity by some sections of the Nigerian military in some attacks on Christians.[20]

Jihadist interpretations of traditional Islam. The Maliki mahdab (school of shari’a) predominates in Nigeria and the nearby countries in West Africa. The sanctioning of the enslavement of non-Muslims by the shari’a of classical Islam led to a long history of Arab slave raiding among the non-Muslim peoples of the Sudan. At the same time the European slavers began their involvement in the Atlantic slave trade for which south western Nigeria was a major centre, Arab slave traders were also raiding as far south as the Middle Belt to capture non-Muslims as slaves. In 1804-08 a jihad led by Usman Dan Fodio, an Islamic cleric overthrew the Hausa kings in the Far North who he regarded as being syncretistic and imposed Fulani and strict Islamic rule. His followers gave him the title caliph (leader of the Islamic community). The Islamic empire he created, which also encompassed parts of Niger and northern Cameroon, became known as the Sokoto Caliphate. This engaged in slave raiding against the non-Muslim populations in the Middle Belt as allowed by shari’a. When it was annexed by the British in 1900-03 there were at least 1 million and possibly as many as 2.5 million slaves. Dan Fodio’s jihad also inspired other jihads across the Sudan and Sahel. He is still revered by many Nigerian Muslims with mosques and streets being named after him and his writings are still widely read. In the last decade Boko Haram leaders have eulogised Dan Fodio and called for a restoration of the Sokoto Caliphate.

In recent years there has been a significant re-emergence of terror attacks by Fulani herdsmen on non-Muslim villages in the Middle Belt. The Global Terrorism Index 2019 noted that they were then killing more people than Boko Haram, as well as having caused over 300,000 people to flee their homes in the previous year. Although many western commentators have claimed these are simply disputes between herders and settled farmers, these attacks on non-Muslim villages closely parallel the actions of the Fulani jihadists immediately prior to the imposition of British rule in Northern Nigeria in 1900.

Tribal identity. This has historically been an additional factor in some persecution, with the Hausa/Fulani who dominate the Far North being mainly Muslim, the Igbo in the South East mainly Christian and the Yoruba who dominate the South West partly Christian and partly Muslim. In 1966 there were attacks on mainly Christian Igbos in the North in which it is estimated at least 8-10,000 were killed, which led to vast numbers of Christian Igbos then fleeing to the South East. A unilateral declaration of an independent republic known as Biafra there led to a 3 year civil war and mass starvation before the Biafran War ended in January 1970.

Future risk

Nigerian Christian leaders have for some years been warning that Christians in the North and Middle Belt are at risk of genocide. There is now also a significant risk of multiple Fulani attacks on Christians spreading to the south west in the immediate future. 

The 2023 Lindisfarne Centre report on the religious background to the Fulani attacks on Christians also noted the importance that raiding non-Muslim areas for slaves and cattle played in Fulani society until the early twentieth century and identified the additional risk that Fulani militia could follow Boko Haram in claiming that shari’a allows them to capture and enslave non-Muslims.

US air strikes launched on December 25^th may lead ISWAP militants to flee to neighbouring states and regions to conduct “revenge attacks” as it seemingly was the case in late 2025 and in Niger State on January 4, 2026, where 30 people were killed and many kidnapped. [21]

Church History

The modern Nigerian church emerged in the 1840s. A critical role in its emergence was played Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1807-91) whose life story loosely parallels that of Patrick in fifth century Ireland. Captured as a slave by Fulani slave raiders, he was freed by the British Royal Navy’s anti-slave trade patrol. He became a Christian and returned to Nigeria. There he played a significant role in evangelism among the Yoruba tribe as well as in translating the Bible into Yoruba before spearheading a new mission up the Niger River.

Nigerian Christianity therefore initially emerged in the south, before spreading to the southern part of the Northern area, now known as the Middle Belt. During this time Fulani jihadists had a major base there at Ilorin, from where they carried out slave raiding as far south as Oyo, lbadan and Abeokuta in the south west. The Nigerian church therefore emerged in the context of jihad and slave raiding carried out by members of Muslim tribes from the Far North.

In 1900 the entire Northern area was brought under indirect British colonial rule (the “Lugard policy”) whereby the British ruled through local Islamic emirs and although slavery was outlawed, justice was enacted primarily through shari’a courts. The British colonial administration also sought to prevent Christian mission work in the Far North, although it had already begun in Zaria and Bida. Christian mission was only allowed in the far North in the 1930s, and even then was heavily regulated and controlled, a factor which Nigerian church historians assert continues to affect church-state relations in modern Africa.[22]

Christians at risk of Genocide: Radicalisation and Traditionalist Islam among the Fulani: The religious background to Fulani militia attacks on Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt click HERE

© Material in this analysis may be freely reproduced or quoted in context provided i) the source is explicitly acknowledged as The Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution and ii) the date of download is stated.