For over a decade, Nigerian and Western religious freedom advocates, including myself, had warned of an overlooked violent force in Nigeria that is systematically targeting Christian farming areas of Nigeria’s central states, known as the Middle Belt. Thousands of these Christians have been killed and over a million of their formerly productive survivors are now mendicant in displacement camps and dependent on foreign aid. Successive Nigerian governments have ignored their desperate appeals for protection and justice, instead giving an apparent grant of impunity to their persecutors, radicalized Fulani Muslim herders. Bands of these Fulanis indiscriminately shoot up and burn defenseless civilian villages with gusto, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” the battle cry of jihadis everywhere. Until now, the foreign policy establishment disputed or minimized our concerns.
Finally, the United States officially recognized this crisis on October 31, when President Trump designated Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRF Act) of 1998, a law that institutionalized religious freedom as a pillar of American foreign policy. He spoke with passion specifically about the undefended Christians in the crosshairs of Islamists there. He directed a review of Nigeria’s foreign aid and ordered the US military to prepare for “possible action.”
This got the immediate attention of Nigeria’s government, which said it welcomed American help while stressing its national sovereignty. Nigeria’s President Tinubu and his two predecessors have been unresponsive to intensifying attacks on these rural Christians in the country’s Middle Belt, even as they fought to protect the mostly Muslim victims of Boko Haram and Islamic State of West Africa in the north. The CPC designation has stirred hope among Nigeria’s Christians, who comprise nearly half of that country’s over 200 million population. A Middle Belt Catholic priest whom I know called me to relate his community’s profound gratitude for “our beloved Donald Trump.”
Trump’s designation took the foreign policy establishment by surprise, which itself is surprising. CPC review is not optional. The Act requires the President to review every foreign country annually and designate those with “particularly severe violations of religious freedom” where the government is actively “engaged” in carrying them out or “tolerates” them.
Fulani violence against Middle Belt Christian communities undoubtedly meets the CPC criteria. Moreover, Trump had done the same in his first term. In 2018, President Trump had met in the White House with Nigeria’s then-President Muhammadu Buhari, the son of a Fulani chieftain, and said he was “deeply concerned by religious violence” and raised “the burning of churches and the killing and persecution of Christians.” With the persecution continuing unabated, the State Department designated Nigeria as a CPC in 2020 but months later rescinded it under the Biden administration, which had an economic determinist theory of this violence: it was a “clash” between farmers and herders over scarce resources brought about by climate change. Religion had nothing to do with it, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken claimed. The congressionally-established, and independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom declared this delisting of Nigeria “unexplainable.”
The Fulani community is among West Africa’s largest ethnic groups, and its millions of members are divided into hundreds of clans across that region. They are largely Muslim, and most are not involved in extremist violence. The Middle Belt attacks are carried out by well-armed groups of radicalized Fulani nomadic herders. They are supported by the cattle barons in the powerful Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association and similar groups in Nigeria. They likely are influenced by but are distinct from some Fulanis elsewhere in West Africa who have been recruited by al Qaeda into the terror group JNIM and its offshoot, Lakurawa, which wreaks havoc in Nigeria’s northwest against Muslims and non-Muslims, alike. Nor should they be conflated, as some scholars have, with those known as “bandits,” Nigeria’s various criminal gangs that show no religious motivation in their violent acts.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who introduced resolutions urging CPC designation for Nigeria in 2022 and early 2025, as chairman of the House Africa Subcommittee held what turned out to be pivotal hearings about the crisis of Fulani jihad in the Middle Belt last March. Catholic Bishop Wilfred Anagbe, a witness from the hard-hit Middle Belt state of Benue, gave firsthand testimony about AK-armed Fulanis, who reduce Christian villages and farms to ashes and kill, rape or kidnap those unable to flee. He attested that 20 parishes in his Makurdi diocese no longer exist because of these attacks. Furthermore, he said, Nigeria’s government was doing nothing to stop this. He spoke boldly, stating that militant Fulani herders are like “‘hired guns’ of cattle oligarchs, who manipulate religion to rally the herders to eliminate the Christian population, and cleanse the land in the name of Islam.”
In Nigeria, such unguarded speech requires heroic courage. On April 11, Chairman Smith issued a press release stating that he was “appalled” by reports that Bishop Anagbe and a priest who directed his Justice, Development and Peace Commissionare facing serious threats because of the Bishop’s testimony. Smith vowed to “work aggressively with the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Justice, and other relevant agencies to take swift and decisive action.”
A few weeks later a Fulani militia attacked Bishop Anagbe’s hometown and killed twelve members of his family and over 50 others. It’s impossible to tell whether this was a reprisal against the bishop or just part of the relentless scourge against the Middle Belt Christians. Around midnight, two weeks later, on June 13, Fulani militants carried out their largest attack yet this year on the Benue town of Yelewata and slaughtered over 270 Christian men, women and children who were sleeping in the marketplace. Many of the victims had been displaced from their villages by an earlier Fulani raid and had fled to Yelewata since it is a garrison town, naively thinking they would be protected. In fact, the troops didn’t stop the several dozen Fulani jihadis who had swarmed in on motorcycles and on foot, once again firing Aks indiscriminately, butchering some with machetes, while crying “Allahu Akbar,” as priests on the scene related. One mother testified before the House Africa Subcommittee on November 20 that she witnessed the horror of her five children being deliberately burned to death. (She, too, received death threats before the hearing concluded, and I have suppressed her name and those of the other Nigerians quoted in this piece.) Pope Leo XIV described the massacre as one carried out “with extreme cruelty,” as he led prayers for Yelewata’s victims in Rome’s St Peter’s square the following Sunday.
Reports keep coming of new Fulani militant atrocities, in Plateau, Kaduna, Taraba, Benue and other Middle Belt states. A cleric told the outlet TruthNigeria (directed by former State Department official Douglas Burton) that, between November 9 and 11, Fulani militants stormed through Taraba’s Wukari Local Government Area, indiscriminately killing 20 people and burning and damaging homes and churches. A 33-year-old farmer from Amadu village told TruthNigeria that, as she prepared to go to early morning Mass, a Fulani militia arrived on motorcycles and shot into her house. She is quoted, stating: “They fired for about five minutes, shouting Allahu Akbar. When the gunfire stopped, I went inside and found my husband of 14 years, John Joseph, already dead.” A survivor from a neighboring village related that attackers on motorcycles with AK assault rifles also strafed his community. He said, “my neighbors, David Bawa and Titus Gregory, lost five family members between them. My house was riddled with bullets.”
TruthNigeria reported the community leader saying that the Fulani militants in Wukari are led by “warlord Alhaji Tukur” and, according to the head of a local security consultancy, they plan and stage their attacks from an abandoned resort now overgrown with vegetation called Danjuma Farm. The security consultant further added that the Fulani “use it as a cover for cattle grazing, but that’s just a smokescreen,” and commented, that if “the government wants to stop the attacks … they must clear out the terrorists from Danjuma Farms.” Wakuri Catholic diocese called the crisis “overwhelming” and reported that 335 of its churches have been destroyed and more than 300,000 Catholics there have been displaced, since 2015. According to a Daily Post Nigeria article, a local priest said “many rural parishes have been abandoned following sustained assaults that have claimed multiple lives and destroyed entire villages.” The bishop told ACI Africa last year that if “peace is restored, the region's rich agricultural landscape could provide a ‘prosperous future for its residents,’” instead, he said, there is food scarcity because of these constant attacks.
Another recent example from Plateau state involved a Christian pastor with the Church of Christ in Nations, who told journalists in Jos, on October 24, that Islamic extremists have threatened to murder him for calling on the Nigerian and U.S. governments to help protect Christians against genocide. He told the Christian outlet Morning Star News: “My life is in grave danger. Even as I speak, I am on the lookout for attacks,” he said. “I no longer sleep with my eyes closed. I have been attacked before but escaped.” The threats came after he appeared in a video on October 15, standing in a mass grave containing the remains of a dozen slain church members, reportedly killed by Fulani herders.
There are countless reports like this across the Middle Belt. This represents not only a horrifying pattern of Fulani militias targeting Christians with severe persecution but also a shocking pattern of government “tolerance” of this persecution. The numbers of Christians murdered like this vary since the government fails to do the police work necessary following the assaults.
Simultaneously, there are constant kidnappings for ransom that target Christian priests and pastors in their churches or in their homes. Typically, the government doesn’t arrest or prosecute the perpetrators who are reported to be Fulani based on witness accounts of the Fulfulde language spoken by the captors. On August 28, 2025, Pastor James Issa with the Evangelical Church of Winning All in Kwara state was taken hostage from his home in the middle of the night by unknown gunmen and, as reported in October, was found dead, even though ransom was paid to free him. According to the family, the government has not responded to their calls. Pastor Ayodeji Akesinro was kidnapped from his home in Ondo a day after Pastor James. Pastor Friday Adehi of the Christian Evangelical Fellowship of Nigeria in Kogi state was also abducted following a church service on August 24. Catholic Bishop Gabriel Dunia of Auchi reported that three seminarians were kidnapped from his Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary on July 10. The Bishop said, “We see a growing pattern of attacks directed against Christian communities and institutions,” Christianity Today reported. This pattern of hostage taking is an obvious example of religious targeting, even if financial motives are also apparent. Proving exactly who is behind them requires police investigations and government prosecutions, which are virtually non-existent.
Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio was an important and early proponent of Nigeria’s CPC designation. But there were hurdles from others within the administration who opposed it. They had exchanged the Biden-era climate change argument for one asserting that more Muslims are killed in Nigeria than Christians, presumably showing that the killers are blind to religion. This argument is debatable. The scholarly group Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa published data in late 2024, showing that Christians are disproportionately killed on the local level: “Overall, 2.7 Christians were killed for every Muslim killed in the data period (the prior four years) and that “In states where the attacks occur, proportional loss to Christian communities is far higher. In terms of local populations, 6.5 times as many Christians were murdered as Muslims.” It cites the Fulani militias as having Christian farmers as “their special target” for what it describes as “jihadist violence.” In any event, for CPC purposes, the essential fact is that Nigeria’s government is not trying to stop the Fulani militias whose “special target” is the Christian community, while it deploys its military forces to fight against Boko Haram and the terror groups in the north who kill moderate Muslims along with Christians.
Moreover, the Fulani herder militias, which are a loosely organized network, and lack explosives and the sophistication of the Middle Eastern terror groups nevertheless are a lethal force because they are armed with AK-47s and 49s while their Christian targets have only home-made pipe guns and bird shot with which to defend themselves. Nigeria’s Firearms Act heavily regulates assault rifles, such as those used by the Fulani, and, thus, leaves law-abiding Christian communities essentially defenseless.
Political momentum in Washington to put Nigeria on the world’s worst persecutors list took on steam throughout October as the annual CPC review neared its end of the year deadline. Celebrity Bill Maher, who is not a Christian, denounced the persecution of Nigerian Christians on an episode of Real Time in late September, which went viral. The White House and the State Department were also hearing from groups of religious freedom activists on Nigeria. Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz had introduced a senate bill in early September urging CPC designation for Nigeria.
On October 21, the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need issued its annual World survey, which reported the stunning finding that “Nigerian Christians in the Middle Belt are bearing the brunt of violent attacks” from those identified as “Fulani militants,” and “[t]he number and ferocity of the attacks on Christian villages have led some experts to conclude that these incursions are a deliberate land grab to remove Christians and Islamize the region.” Earlier, Open Doors, the evangelical research group issued its annual survey for 2025, which concluded that “More believers are killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world,” and it identified Fulani militants, as among those attacking Nigerian Christians, making the key observation that “[t]he government’s failure to protect Christians and punish perpetrators has only strengthened the militants’ influence.” Myself and dozens of other American religious freedom advocates sent an appeal to President Trump specifically asking him to designate Nigeria as a CPC on October 24.
The President has begun a much-needed discussion between our two countries from a religious freedom perspective. Raising the possibility of cutting U.S foreign aid to Nigeria, he appointed the powerful House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) and Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV), also on Appropriations, to lead an investigation. He also instructed the Pentagon to prepare for possible military action in Nigeria. The IRF Act cites a variety of actions the President may take in addition, including a binding agreement with Nigeria obliging it to “take substantial steps to address and phase out, the acts, policies, or practices constituting violations of religious freedom,” as well as an array of additional sanctions against responsible Nigerian individuals and groups and the government itself.
Continued American pressure on Nigeria’s government to take action against Fulani jihadis would be broadly beneficial. It could save many lives and help halt Nigeria’s descent into failed state status. It could allow farming to resume unimpeded in the Middle Belt, Nigeria’s breadbasket and end dependency on aid for millions of now displaced Nigerian farming families. It could strengthen the rule of law within Nigeria. It could lessen the risk of a devastating civil war in which the nation fractures along religious and ethnic lines. It could reduce refugee flows from Africa’s most populous country that will further destabilize a West Africa that, in places, already teeters on the edge of a terrorist takeover.