By Greg Maresca
Global conflict has reached its highest level since World War II, fueled by a surge in terrorist insurgencies, political upheaval, and full-scale wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and dozens of other regions. According to the Peace Research Institute, there are 61 active conflicts across 35 countries.
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In the longstanding and brutal ledger of religious persecution, Nigeria now occupies its own grim chapter with its enduring pogrom against Christians.
Nigeria is the largest populated nation on the African continent and has become the crucible of suffering for its Christian minority.
Islamic insurgents strike at night, torching homes while families sleep. They ambush churches during Sunday services, gunning down entire congregations. They raid Christian farming villages, slaughtering men, raping women, and abducting children. These are coordinated acts of religious cleansing with survivors forced to convert to Islam or be killed.
The violence throughout the years against Christians in Nigeria has only intensified. According to the Nigerian watchdog group Intersociety, since 2009, more than 52,000 Christians have been killed and more than 20,000 churches desecrated or destroyed.
These are not isolated events. In 2024, 4,100 Christians were killed in Nigeria. This accounted for 82% of all Christian martyrdoms worldwide. By August 2025, more than 7,000 were killed.
This surge reflects not just a crisis of security, but a deepening pattern of persecution that is nothing short of genocide. As the church marks each martyrdom with prayer and remembrance, the Body of Christ in Nigeria continues to suffer wounds that cry out for justice, solidarity, and global witness.
Global Christian Relief and other worldwide monitors have named Nigeria the deadliest country for Christians, a title that reverberates with the quiet void of global indifference.
These atrocities are driven by a network of Islamist extremist groups that include Boko Haram, Fulani militias, and dozens of other factions with ties to ISIS and al Qaeda. Their coordinated campaigns have devastated Christian communities across Nigeria and the entire African continent at an alarming rate that continues unabated.
The silence of the world echoes the hush of Good Friday when injustice at its zenith was dismissed as routine, while suffering and death was business as usual. Nigeria’s Christian communities are enduring one of the worst persecutions in modern times, yet the world treats it as a nonstarter.
Before leaving office in 2020, the Trump administration took action by placing Nigeria on the State Department’s list of “Countries of Particular Concern” (CPC). The CPC list allowed for economic sanctions to pressure Nigeria’s government to protect Christians and other religious minorities from violence.
However, in 2021, the Biden administration removed Nigeria from the CPC, even as the massacres intensified without due cause.
As a result, the Nigerian government, through either willful complicity or gross negligence, has enabled these atrocities to persist unchecked.
In response to the ongoing Nigerian massacre, a coalition of religious leaders, spearheaded by Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, sent a petition to President Donald Trump on Oct. 15 condemning the Nigerian government’s treatment of religious minorities and urging Trump to redesignate Nigeria to the CPC.
Among the signatories were San Francisco Catholic Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Focus on the Family President Jim Daly, and dozens of others.
The petition unequivocally states:
[The Nigerian government] is directly violating religious freedom by enforcing Islamic blasphemy laws that carry the death penalty and harsh prison sentences against citizens of various religions.
It also demonstrably tolerates relentless aggression uniquely against Christian farming families by militant Fulani Muslim herders, who [are] forcibly Islamizing the Middle Belt.
