Nigerian Christians say their communities are under siege by Islamist “bandits” who are planning nothing less than genocide.
The Fulani militants preying on these Christians are often portrayed as small bands of criminals, but victims of their kidnapping and murder sprees say they have developed a vast and well-organized system of persecution.
Criminologist Emeka Umeagbalasi, director of the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersocial), told the Catholic News Agency (CNA) on Monday that Islamists have a strategy to “annihilate” Nigeria’s millions of Christians and “Islamize the country.”
“We have documented the coordinated and systematic murder of an entire people; therefore we are clearly talking about a Christian genocide,” he told CNA through its Spanish-language partner organization, ACI Prensa.
“Today in northern Nigeria, it’s almost impossible to live as a Christian, and if the trend continues, within half a century we will no longer be a country with religious pluralism,” he said.
“No one dares to openly confess their faith. If you do, you risk being killed for ‘blasphemy,’” he said.
Umeagbalasi said the Nigerian state was “complicit” in this “systematic strategy to achieve the extermination of Christians,” while the international community has been indifferent to the fate of the victims.
“Complicity is part of an expansive policy by the Nigerian government to Islamize the country,” he said, noting that the president between 2015 and 2023, Muhammadu Buhari, hails from the same Fulani Muslim tribes that are killing and abducting Christians in shocking numbers. Buhari’s successor, the current President Bola Tinubu, was Buhari’s choice to follow him. Tinubu is an ethnic Yoruba, but also Muslim.
Umeagbalasi said that despite Buhari’s promises to control terrorist groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), those groups have grown significantly more powerful and vicious during his reign. Nigerian security forces do little to prevent constant raids on Christian villages, dismissing them as mere “community crimes.”
“More than 850 Christians remain captive in several camps in the Rijana area, very close to a military base. This began in December 2024, and they remain held by jihadists to this day. Between December and August 2025, more than 100 prisoners were killed there. How is it possible that all this is happening just a few kilometers from military installations without anyone taking action?” Umeagbalasi asked.
Among the latest victims abducted on Monday was Alhaji Alhassan Bawa Niworo, former chairman of the Niger State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB). Niworo and several other victims were captured by terrorists who halted their convoy with a roadblock.
Some of the victims were freed after hefty ransoms were paid to the kidnappers. The recovered victims said they were shuffled between an entire network of villages that served as camps for the terrorists.
Meanwhile, residents of Christian farming villages on the outskirts of the network are abandoning their homes in the face of constant attacks. Some of these refugees said the bandits have taken over their former homes and blockaded the entrances, forcing them to live in the wild.
Open Doors, a Christian persecution watchdog group, published an interview last week with a Christian farming family that dared to return to their village to gather food after Fulani militants drove them away. The militants caught them and dragged two women from the family away to their camp to be repeatedly raped.
“They did this to us because we are Christians. Since I went to that camp, all those who were kidnapped, I didn’t see any Muslims held there,” one of the victims said.
The ordeal only ended when one of the women, who had recently been married, convinced her Fulani captors she was pregnant. The terrorists did not show her any mercy because of this, but a local superstition holds that blood from a miscarriage brings bad luck, so when they saw her bleeding from repeated sexual abuse, they dumped her and her sister-in-law off at a nearby church.
Umeagbalasi’s group Intersocial said on Sunday that up to 850 Christians are being held prisoner by Fulani jihadists near a military post in Nigeria’s southern Rijana Forest. Victims who have been rescued from the Rijana region said it contains at least 21 terrorist camps, earning it the nickname “Forest of Hostages.”
Survivors of these camps described them as brutal installations where hostages were fed nothing but cornmeal or starved for days on end, and were brutally beaten by their captors. Even babies who cried were flogged by the terrorists. Kidnapping victims whose families could not afford to pay ransom were often executed.
“They warned us never to speak, never to look them in the eye, and never to say Christian prayers. Once, when my baby cried, I tried to breastfeed her. One terrorist snatched her from me. Instead of soothing her, he covered her mouth and nose, choking her. I had to wrestle her back,” one survivor said.
Intersociety researchers backed up Umeagbalasi’s accusation that the Nigerian military grew less professional, less attentive, and more likely to actively aid the Islamists under Buhari’s government. The researchers described the relationship between Nigerian troops and the jihadis as something akin to a “romance.”
Persecution of Nigeria’s Christians is made easier by the Tinubu government’s insistence on keeping them disarmed and helpless.
Dr. Bitrus Pogu, president of a group called the Middle Belt Forum that represents over 45 million Christians, told Genocide Watch in August that the Nigerian military is very reluctant to pursue terrorists even when it knows where they are hiding, but will crack down hard on Christian villages that attempt to defend themselves.
“If our youths try to defend their communities, the military storms in, arrests them, confiscates their locally made pipe guns, tortures them, and hands them over to the police. The police, in turn, brutalize and detain them without due process,” Pogu said.
Genocide Watch collected other testimonials from Christian villagers and local officials who accused the military of ignoring or abetting Islamist militants. Several of them mentioned the Nigerian military’s insistence on disarming Christian militias and vigilantes.
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