Social media influencers, public figures, and local and international faith-based organizations are amplifying claims of “Christian genocide” in Nigeria. They point to a wave of attacks on churches and Christian communities in the central and northern parts of the country.
In one example, US Senator Ted Cruz said on the social media platform X that Nigerian authorities were ignoring and encouraging “the mass murder of Christians by Islamic jihadists”. Cruz also introduced a bill aimed at sanctioning Nigeria for its persecution of Christians. The Nigerian government denies the claims.
Minister of Information and National Orientation Mohammed Idris admits that there are security problems in Nigeria but “claims of deliberate, systematic attacks on Christians are false and harmful.”
Security, especially in the country’s Muslim-majority north, has been deteriorating for years. Nearly 10,000 people have been killed and hundreds more abducted since Bola Tinubu became Nigeria’s president in mid-2023. The violence has driven nearly 3 million people out of their homes.
The Benue and Plateau of the North Central region are most affected. Armed groups have killed and abducted people and destroyed buildings, schools, clinics and places of worship.
Analysts and survivors say the violence transcends religions and is driven by land disputes, climate change, poverty and weak governance as well as religion.
Nigeria: rift between farmers and herders
Nigeria is plagued by liquidity and overlapping security challenges across various sectors. Boko Haram insurgency is intensifying in the North East. The jihadist terrorist group has killed thousands of people since its inception in 2002. In 2014, the group kidnapped more than 250 schoolgirls in Nigeria’s Borno state.
Criminal gangs and kidnappers are roaming the North West. They often target people from rural deprived communities.
In the Middle Belt, which includes states like Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa and Southern Kaduna, communal and pastoral violence has claimed many lives.
In July, attackers attacked the village of Yelawata in Benue, killing at least 160 people. The fertile region lies on the fault line of Nigeria’s deepening farmer-herder crisis, where there is a long history of tensions and clashes between mostly Christian farmers and mostly Muslim Fulani herders.
Attacks and reprisals by both sides date back decades and have turned deadly. Christian farming communities have borne the brunt of the violence and accuse the government of failing to acknowledge the scale, including ethnic and regional dimensions, of the crisis.
Ms Atta Barkindo, executive director of the Abuja-based Kukah Centre, believes the narrative of “Christian genocide” stems from the government’s inability to protect its citizens.
“What’s happening in Nigeria, and I don’t want this to dominate the debate, is a matter of mentality,” Barkindo told DW.
“These things are very historical. In my opinion, I don’t think there is any deliberate intention on the part of the Nigerian government to kill Christians or to deploy state actors to do so. I don’t think that’s really the case. I believe what people are trying to express is the failure of the government to protect its citizens and when the majority of those killed or targeted are Christians, it naturally leads to that perception. Promotes.”
What do the survivors say?
On a quiet Sunday evening in May, Comfort was stirring dinner pots in her small kitchen in the Bokkos region of Isfahans Plateau state when she heard fast footsteps outside. Her husband, Danladi, ran into his compound panting and covered in dust. He had just heard that armed men were coming towards his community. He held her hand and asked her to collect the children at a safe place, she told DW.
“After we ran away, he stayed at home with his little brother. They.” [armed men] Met them at home and killed them. Our houses were burnt and now we are struggling without food and shelter for our children. now they don’t have [anything] No food, no school, no business, no nothing.”
Karimatu Aminu also lost her husband in the crisis. It was a Thursday morning in late December when she was going to drop him off at the farm. He had asked her to stop at the local market and buy some things for the evening. He told DW that was the last time he saw her alive.
Aminu said, “It is not just about one group… When Fulani houses are burnt today, tomorrow houses of the Christian community will also be burnt. Both sides are losing people and houses.”
Christian-Muslim distrust
For many communities in the region, the violence goes beyond tit-for-tat killings between herders and farmers, but is part of a campaign to drive them off their lands – remnants of their distrust of ethnic Fulani pastoral groups, dating back to the notorious Islamic jihad that spread across northern and central Nigeria and disrupted local structures and political systems.
Analysts say a deep history is shaping modern conflict in the region because many groups – which were not fully conquered then – interpret today’s crisis not simply as a dispute over land or resources, but as a continuation of historical aggression that fueled Christian-Muslim distrust.
In June, James Ortes Iorzua Ayatse, the traditional leader of the ethnic Tiv in Benue state, rejected the farmer-herders’ story. “What we are dealing with here in Benue is a well-planned, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land-grabbing campaign by herdsmen terrorists and bandits.” He said.
A necessary conversation?
Samuel Malik, a senior researcher at the pan-African Good Governance Africa think tank, believes that some of the violence, particularly in parts of north-central Nigeria, may have religious causes. But Malik told DW, “There is no credible evidence of a state-led or coordinated campaign to exterminate Christians that amounts to genocide.”
Insecurity in Nigeria is rooted in a complex cocktail of “governance failures, corruption, poverty, climate-induced livelihood pressures, insurgency and organized crime”, he said, and describing it as genocide oversimplifies these dynamics.
Narratives such as the so-called “Christian genocide” claim to obscure the overlapping drivers of conflicts in the country may undermine interreligious and community-level peacebuilding efforts.
“The ‘genocide’ narrative widely propagated by some Western supporters and religious groups has significant implications. This is a case of hanging a dog for defaming it.” Malik told DW.
“This puts pressure on foreign governments, particularly the United States, to adopt a punitive and moralistic stance towards Nigeria rather than constructive, evidence-based engagement,” he said. ,“Furthermore, it damages the international reputation of the Nigerian government by portraying it as complicit in religious persecution, making it difficult or impossible to obtain the support needed to tackle the problem of insecurity.”
Father Atta agrees that the narrative can deepen division and distrust.
It could also help create awareness about the violence, he says: “It’s raising questions beyond the claim of genocide. It’s raising very important issues about security and insecurity in the country generally, and why we need to have this conversation.”
Edited by: Benita Van Eysen