Nigeria has made improvements in addressing the pervasive jihadist campaigns against Christians nationwide, but skyrocketing kidnapping rates should not be treated as a mere “security” problem when victims say their captors demand they convert, Ryan Brown, the CEO of the Christian aid organization Open Doors US, told Breitbart News this week.
“In all of this discourse, it breaks my heart to see that the voices of the victims are just routinely getting marginalized, and that’s not right,” Brown emphasized in conversation with Breitbart News on Thursday. “We have to listen to what they’re saying and there are so many that are telling us that their faith is a piece of the puzzle, that complicated situation on the ground, and we just can’t continue to deny that.”
Brown spoke to Breitbart News in the context of the release of a new report by Open Doors, “Nigeria at the Crossroads,” tracking violence against Christians in the country throughout much of the past year.
The report focused especially on the aftermath of President Donald Trump announcing in October 2025 that Nigeria would return to the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) due to the outrageous levels of violence against Christians in the country, primarily in the Muslim-majority north plagued by Islamic State affiliates and Boko Haram and the Middle Belt, where Fulani jihadists continue a campaign of extermination against indigenous Christians.
FILE/Catholics pray at the Saint Michael’s Cathedral during the Sunday’s service in Minna on November 30, 2025 as the congregatipon prayed for the safe return of the abducted students of Saint Mary’s Catholic School earlier this month. (Light Oriye Tamunotonye / AFP via Getty Images)
The report credited the designation – which outraged Nigerian President Bola Tinubu – with pressuring the Nigerian government to take actions against jihadist violence, but also documented a major increase in the number of abductions in the country, both of Christians and non-Christians.
“In the October to December 2025 quarter, compared to the same period for the previous year, there was a 153% increase from 1,352 to 3,415,” the report detailed. “November 2025 was a particularly violent month, featuring mass abductions of school students and teachers6 leading to a general shut down of schools in about 11 states in northern Nigeria.”
Brown explained that a combination of factors appears to be responsible for the surge in kidnappings. Some of the documented abductions were not conducted for religious reason and appeared to be the product of criminal opportunism: “while Christians have certainly been targeted for abductions, if you go back a number of years ago, part of what that ended up proving is that abductions could be big business.”
This phenomenon did not exclusively account for the growing numbers of abductions, however.
“If we take a look at some of the numbers, even over the past year … we would anticipate seeing, unfortunately, an increase in the number of people killed in this last year, we would anticipate a predominant increase in the number of abductions,” Brown explained, noting that 2026 data is still incomplete.
“A lot of that fairly quickly after the military strikes of the U.S. government … there was a lot of speculation that there was an increase and we were seeing that increase in an attempt to create human shields for some of those perpetrators of the violence.”
The Nigerian government has repeatedly denied that any religious persecution exists in the country, despite the overwhelming evidence, including many videos filmed by terrorists themselves, that multiple jihadist organizations in the country are attempting to exterminate the country’s Christian population. Following the CPC designation, Tinubu boldly declared, “the characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality.” Tinubu ultimately accepted American support against jihadists, resulting in the Christmas Day 2025 airstrikes in northwestern Sokoto state.
The already existing disposition of the Nigerian government to disregard Christian persecution combined with the increase in generic criminals engaging in mass kidnappings has complicated efforts to advocate for the persecuted Christians, Brown observed, emphasizing that Nigerian officials must listen to the testimonies of the victims of attacks who insist that their faith is a primary motivation for their targeting.
“So much of the discourse, unfortunately, has been to downplay the role that religious motivations have within some of these attacks and the violence that is going on,” Brown lamented in comments to Breitbart News. “We are not serving the situation well – we’re not serving any of the victims well – in marginalizing their voices.”
“The victims are telling us that this is a factor,” he continued. “They’re seeing it, they’re experiencing it. We cannot marginalize the voices of those victims. We have to allow local religious leaders to be part of the conversations going on and also part of the solutions.”
While the increase in abductions included crime apparently unrelated to religious conflict, he emphasized, “there is still a reality that, within that, there is a group of people that are specifically being targeted because of their faith and abductions as well – even more so, we see this with those who are killed for their faith.”
The victims, he noted, say “it’s communicated to them that these atrocities would end for them if they would just convert, if they would just leave Christianity behind and profess Islam.”
While the abductions increased after the CPC designation, Brown credited the Trump administration’s moves with resulting in concrete improvements in the Nigerian government’s response to the crisis. He observed in particular the “redeployment of police in many areas of folks that have historically been on security details for prominent individuals … redeployed into some of these geographical areas where there has been instability.” Nigerian authorities have also improved treatment of displaced Christians stuck in camps after their communities have been destroyed by Islamic extremists.
“All of those things that we have discussed about the intentionality of the Nigerian government … have been in the wake of that CPC designation and that forced a level of visibility and a level of discourse that was not happening previously,” Brown asserted. “I don’t think that any of the Christians we work with on the ground there in Nigeria would dispute the fact that the CPC designation specifically has forced intentionality and dialogue and the Nigerian government has, to a degree, been willing to engage in those dialogues and has put some positive things in play.”
The problem, however, is far from solved. Open Doors recommends concrete improvements in Nigeria’s early warning systems, for example, in which intelligence that jihadists are preparing sweeping attacks on Christian communities actually result in a police or military response. Improving the lives of Christians in displaced camps – and, ideally, returning them to their true homes – is also a long-term goal, though one especially complicated in the Middle Belt, where Fulani jihadists intentionally colonize Christian land.
Brown also noted that a “disproportionate amount of attention [is] being focused on the known and identified terrorist groups, ISWAP [Islamic State West Africa Province] and Boko Haram, and their presence in northern Nigeria.” The Middle Belt, he lamented, as been “overlooked.”
Ultimately, Brown asserted that a “primary point” in addressing the crisis is to ensure that Nigerian leaders acknowledge the religious dimension to the violence and advocate for persecuted Christians.
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