House Republicans led by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Riley Moore (R-WV) introduced a bill on Monday calling for the State Department to offer comprehensive reports on American actions to protect Christians persecuted by a host of jihadist terror threats in Nigeria, as well as efforts to convince the Nigerian government to take the threat seriously.
The “Nigeria Religious Freedom and Accountability Act” supports efforts by President Donald Trump to protect Christians in the country, particularly the designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for religious freedom, which allows for the imposition of sanctions on the country if its government is found to be aiding human rights abuses on faith grounds. Trump had placed Nigeria on the CPC list during his first term in office, but former President Joe Biden removed the country shortly after becoming the president, outraging religious freedom advocates. Trump returned the country to the list in October.
The new bill, if passed, would also ask the State Department to monitor individual jihadist groups in Nigeria that may be eligible to be deemed Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and to document any positive efforts the Nigerian government may make to eliminate the “blasphemy” laws in place in several of the country’s Muslim-majority states.
The bill would report an initial report from the State Department in 90 days of its passing and one every year following until Nigeria is removed from the CPC list. This report would include assessments of Nigeria’s compliance with America’s international religious freedom laws, efforts against the blasphemy law, efforts by Nigeria to offer humanitarian aid to persecuted Christians, and identification of potential groups or individuals to sanction.
“Estimates indicate that between 50,000 to 125,000 Christians have been martyred between 2009 and 2025, with more than 19,000 Christian churches attacked or destroyed,” the text of the bill observes, in particularly highlighting the atrocities committed by ethnic Fulani militias, sometimes known as “Fulani herdsmen,” who have engaged in anti-Christian extermination campaigns in the Middle Belt of the country. In addition to Fulani terrorists, Nigeria faces regular attacks by the jihadist terrorists of Boko Haram in the north of the country and various terrorist gangs associated with the Islamic State.
“These militias have conducted attacks involving targeted killings, hostage-taking, hijackings, armed assaults, massacres of civilians, destruction of property, and forced displacement of local population,” the text adds, noting that 72 percent of Christians murdered for their faith around the world were killed in Nigeria in 2025, according to the humanitarian organization Open Doors.
Rather than protect the targets of this jihadist violence, the bill notes that Nigeria has allowed states with Muslims majorities to impose sharia, or the Islamic law, on everyone, including laws against “blasphemy,” which are abused to persecute non-Muslims.
“Nigeria retains and enforces blasphemy laws carrying the death penalty in northern states under Sharia criminal law; such laws have been used to target Christians, Muslims, and dissenters,” it notes. Furthermore, the government in Abuja “routinely denies that religious persecution exists” and “has historically failed to adequately respond to or prevent religiously motivated violence.
Under current President Bola Tinubu, a Muslim, the government has indeed denied any religiously motivated violence occurring in the country at all. Following Trump’s CPC designation, Tinubu declared, “the characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians.”
Tinubu’s top officials have pressured national marketing firms to help eliminate awareness of jihadist killings in the country and have vehemently opposed the idea of a constitutional amendment protecting religious freedom by banning the imposition of sharia.
“We differ with them on this idea of amending our constitution. Nigeria is a sovereign state, has never been colonized by America anywhere and we are not Venezuela,” Presidential Adviser on Policy Communication Daniel Bwala declared in December. Venezuela is a majority Christian country whose socialist regime routinely persecutes Catholics for opposition to Marxist ideology, but has never in its history been colonized by the United States or allowed the official imposition of sharia on its population. Bwala never clarified why he mentioned Venezuela in his comment.
Public tensions aside, the Nigerian government did collaborate with American airstrikes on Islamic State targets in the northwest of the country on Christmas Day. The U.S. government also confirmed this month that it had sent a “small U.S. team” of military officers to Nigeria to help contain jihadist violence.
In a statement after introducing the bill, Rep. Smith deemed it necessary in the face of “the Nigerian government’s blatant denial of the religious persecution occurring within its borders.”
“Inaction on the parts of both the Nigerian and U.S. governments only emboldens these radical Islamist thugs to inflict even more misery, suffering, and death upon Christians and non-radical Muslims in Nigeria,” he asserted. “That is why it is paramount that the United States remain steadfast in its mission to promote and protect religious freedoms throughout the globe—by ensuring that we are doing all that we can to end this crisis, we set an important example for the rest of the international community.”
Rep. Moore noted in his statement the “unspeakable violence” that has become routine for Christians in the country.
“As part of the investigation President Trump asked me to lead, I visited Nigeria and witnessed firsthand the horrors our brothers and sisters in Christ face and saw the security challenges Nigeria faces,” he recalled.
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