Mitigating the security risk associated with the disagreement over “Christian Genocide” in Nigeria
One of the most discussed issues in Nigeria now is a dangerous disagreement over whether there is “Christian genocide” in the country. In a ludicrous outcome, the disagreement has pitched Nigerian government officials spread across the executive and legislative arms, Muslim and a few Christian clerics, and industrial security and defence practitioners against a coalition of US and British lawmakers, international Christian advocacy organisations, and some Nigerian-based human rights organisations and individuals.
At the centre of the argument is the fundamental disagreement over the classification of violence typologies, threat actors and attack vectors and who they are targeting, what some have described as a mischaracterisation of violence. The proponents argue that some components of the threat actors and attack vectors in Nigeria specifically target Christians, while the opponents argue that it is a complex crisis of “criminality and resource conflict” and that the attacks affect both Christians and Muslims. This seemingly semantic spat is slowly metastasising into a profound national security risk, engendering conspiracy theories, sabotaging peace efforts, polarising the populace, and likely punitive US action.
“What is common across the country, and particularly the three northern regions’ insecurity occurrences, is the inability of the government to effectively prevent the random as well as the targeted attacks.”
The main people and groups politically pushing the Christian genocide narrative in the US and demanding the Country of Particular Concern (CPC) designation for Nigeria includeUS Senator Ted Cruz (Republican, Texas), Representative Chris Smith (Republican, New Jersey), Representative Riley Moore (Republican, West Virginia), Mike Arnold, a former mayor of Blanco, Texas, and Nina Shea, a senior fellow and director for the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is also advocating for this categorisation as contained in its July 2025 report on Nigeria. USCIRF recommended the designation for years, leading to the State Department finally designating Nigeria as a CPC in December 2020. The later decision by the State Department to revoke this designation in 2021 was heavily criticised by USCIRF.
Read also: U.S. pressure and Nigeria’s unresolved trauma: Is ‘Genocide’ too simple a frame?
The two main issues identified in USCIRF’s reports on Nigeria that it uses to buttress its claims regarding suppressed religious freedom are what it describes as the Nigerian government’s tolerance of non-state violence, when it cites it as “tolerating” or being “slow to react” to violent attacks perpetrated by non-state actors, including Boko Haram, ISWAP, and “armed Fulani militia”, against both Christian and Muslim communities. The second issue of specific concern to USCRIF is the state-sanctioned blasphemy laws, and it highlights that 12 Nigerian states and the federal government enforce laws that are used to prosecute and imprison individuals for perceived insults to religion. USCRIF views these laws as a direct violation of international religious freedom standards and a form of state-level persecution, affecting Christians, Muslims, and humanists alike.
The following groups provide the statistics and mobilisation behind the political push: Open Doors International (an organisation that produces the annual World Watch List, consistently ranking Nigeria among the countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution and often citing it as the country with the highest number of Christians killed for their faith globally), Genocide Watch (an international organisation that has referred to the killings in Nigeria as a “silent slaughter” and a form of genocide against defenceless Christians), and Christian Solidarity Worldwide, CSW, (an international Christian human rights organisation that works to document and lobby against the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.)
In Nigeria, some of the proponents of the narrative and of Nigeria’s categorisation as a CPC include Emeka Umeagbalasi, Director of the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), and Bishop Wilfred Anagbe, the Catholic Bishop of Makurdi Diocese in Benue State. A segment of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) insists that the violence is a targeted, systematic persecution with a religious and ethnic component. However, this last group is not on record as having advocated for the US categorisation of Nigeria as a CPC. The Archbishop of the Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, has publicly argued that the CPC designation would “increase tensions, sow doubt, and open windows of suspicion,” ultimately undermining fragile, ongoing interfaith dialogue and national healing efforts.
The divergence of narratives between the government and those advocating for the Christian genocide claim is the core problem. Targeted religious attacks exist across Nigeria but majorly in parts of North Central, North East and North West Nigeria, where religious places of worship have been attacked and damaged or destroyed, Nigerians in religious places of worship, both churches and mosques, have been killed or abducted and records of religious persecution abound, as do extrajudicial killings attributed to religious or other associated identities. Data from the company I founded and that I currently run, Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited (BSIL), and from the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data (ACLED) show these occurrences. Some infamous examples are the dastardly killings of Major General Idris Alkali on September 3, 2018, in Plateau State, North Central, and that of Deborah Yakubu on May 12, 2022, in Sokoto, North West.
What is common across the country, and particularly the three northern regions’ insecurity occurrences, is the inability of the government to effectively prevent the random as well as the targeted attacks. There is an almost overarching crisis of weak governance and criminality, coupled with specific theatres of occurrences in the North Central, North East and North West, where the violence is targeted and does not distinguish between identities, which may appear to callous observers or researchers as religiously motivated and having genocidal undertones. But even to the most casual observer, it will be obvious that these occurrences are across the regions and affect all faiths and not one.
Read also: Christian Genocide in Nigeria: Between CAN position and what data says
The failure of the government to stop the targeted attacks and to align its narrative with the evidence of targeted religious violence undermines its own efforts to stabilise the country and invariably converts a complex security threat into a severe political crisis, accelerating societal fragmentation and increasing the likelihood of punitive international action.
The most immediate danger is the further collapse of trust and cohesion that may widen the trust deficit and the fuelling of militia proliferation. Additionally, the disagreement hands political ammunition to Nigeria’s international critics, accelerating the risk of punitive sanctions.
The two committees established by the Nigerian government (one at the office of the Secretary of the Government of the Federation, OSGF, and the other by the National Assembly, NASS) must realise that their current stance and counter-narrative, while aiming to defend Nigeria’s sovereignty, are exacerbating the crisis internally. They should also realise that merely embarking on a visit to the US without understanding the core drivers of the issues and marshalling appropriate and grounded narratives will be an exercise in futility. We recommend that the government:
1. Acknowledges the existence of religiously motivated attacks and engages the affected groups (CAN, Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, MACBAN, Farmers Associations, etc.) in good faith. In doing this, it should publicly acknowledge that, while many conflicts in Nigeria are criminal and resource-based, some attacks exhibit explicit religious and ethnic targeting that meets the definition of persecution.
2. Strengthen the rule of law and ensure swift accountability by ending the widespread impunity through strengthening accountability in the security sector, establishing special courts and ensuring swift prosecution of perpetrators of violent crimes across the country, but particularly so in the three northern regions, regardless of ethnicity or religious affiliation.
3. Prioritise support for displaced farmers and herders by implementing a clear, state-backed plan to restore displaced farming and herder communities to their land, guaranteeing security for them to avert further famine risk.
4. Engage the US and other international partners and concerns on blasphemy laws and ensure they understand their origins in Nigeria’s colonial past and how institutionalised they currently are in Nigerian laws.
Only by adopting a narrative of genuine concern and coupling it with decisive, non-discriminatory action can the Nigerian state rebuild the trust necessary to extinguish the flames of sectarianism and neutralise this paramount national security risk arising from this unfortunate disagreement.
Kabir Adamu is the Managing Director of Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited.
