Religious Freedom Activists Demand Stronger Response to Massacres of Christians in Nigeria

They came to the village of Naridon just before midnight. Gunmen slipped into the farming settlement in Nigeria’s Kaduna State at around 11 p.m. on July 26 and began firing into homes where families were already asleep. The attackers torched houses behind them as residents ran into the nearby fields and bush in the dark; eight children were among at least 30 people killed before the night was over.Barnabas Aid and other groups monitoring the region say the gunfire continued into early morning with no security response ever reaching the village. What was left were multiple homes and shops burned to the ground. One family lost five children in a single night; the sole survivor is now critically injured and fighting to live. Local monitoring group Truth Nigeria puts the real toll from coordinated attacks in the area above 60. A Nigerian Army post sat just a few miles off but never sent help while the attack was underway, and residents say the same community was hit in a similar raid around the same time last year.Funeral services for 27 of the victims were held August 1 at a Catholic Mass in Kafanchan attended by thousands of mourners.Chillingly, the slaughter at Naridon was not an isolated incident. The advocacy director for Equipping the Persecuted, Kyle Abts, tells The New York Sun that Fulani militants slaughtered 14 Christians in Otukpo, Benue State, the same week. This second massacre barely registered beside Naridon’s.“It reflects a continuing pattern in which predominantly Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, e.g. Benue, Plateau and Southern Kaduna, are repeatedly attacked, often with devastating loss of life and little accountability afterward,” Mr. Abts says.He says the fact that Naridon was attacked twice in a year “reinforc[es] the perception among residents that vulnerable communities remain exposed despite repeated warnings.”A 2026 World Watch List prepared by Open Doors International found that4,849 Christians were killed worldwide for their faith in the year ending last September. Of those, 3,490 — or 72 percent — were Nigerian, up from 3,100 the year before. Nigeria ranks seventh on the group’s list of the hardest places in the world to be a Christian.“The attacks against Middle Belt Christians are continuing unabated as Nigeria’s government passively watches,” the senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, Nina Shea, tells the Sun. “Abuja fails at a government’s first responsibility — to protect all its citizens.”Washington Reacts, Abuja InvestigatesThe Naridon killings come amid a live fight in Washington over exactly this. President Trump redesignated Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act on October 31, returning it to a list from which it had been quietly removed by the Biden administration in 2021.The two governments have since stood up a joint working group that met for the first time at Abuja in January to address violence against Nigeria’s vulnerable communities, according to a statement from the United States Embassy in Nigeria. The State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs condemned the Naridon attackdirectly on August 1, calling on Nigerian authorities to take decisive action.A coalition of Nigerian diaspora Christian groups in the United States has separately written to President Bola Tinubu demanding urgent protection for Kamaru ward where Naridon is located.Nigeria’s government firmly rejects the characterization of the violence as predominantly anti-Christian, arguing its Muslim-majority north also suffers heavily from the same armed groups. Kaduna State’s governor, Uba Sani, has condemned the Naridon killings and directed security agencies to identify and arrest those responsible, while Mr. Tinubu has ordered an investigation and directed the armed forces, police, and intelligence agencies to hunt down the attackers. As of this week, just one suspect — 48-year-old Salihu Miakailu — had been arrested and was being held in military custody.However, Ms. Shea says the designation has already shifted the conversation inside Nigeria.“After the designation, several Nigerian Christian leaders who had been silent until then, including several Catholic bishops, have found their voice to protest this,” she explains, “and we’re beginning to see a national debate within Nigeria on the persecution of Christians to a degree not previously seen.”That optimism doesn’t extend to the battlefield, where the joint military effort with the United States has so far pointed in another direction.“The joint US-Nigerian military action has been directed entirely against Islamic State and its splinter groups in the north,” Ms. Shea continues. “It does not address the main, immediate threat to Nigerian Christians, the Fulani jihadist militias operating against them in the Middle Belt.”The residents of the Middle Belt’s Christian communities agree.“From the perspective of many affected communities, there has been little measurable improvement in security,” observes Mr. Abts. “Attacks continue, villages are repeatedly targeted, and perpetrators are rarely brought to justice.” He says the designation’s value has been mostly symbolic so far. “While international designations can raise awareness and create diplomatic pressure, the ultimate measure is whether vulnerable communities are safer, and many Nigerians would argue that they are not seeing any changes yet,” Mr. Abts says. Beneath both accounts sits a deeper problem muting the global response.Many Western governments and international bodies “view the nomadic Fulani Muslim herders, even the subset of those who have become violent jihadis, as victims of Western colonization and climate change,” Ms. Shea says. “They see Christians as the oppressors because they have Western ties.”There’s a related problem, Mr. Abts highlights, in how the killings get labeled to begin with.“The main challenge is that the violence is often framed primarily as banditry, resource conflict, or generalized insecurity rather than as targeted violence against specific religious communities,” he explains. “International actors often prioritize diplomatic relationships, security cooperation, and broader regional stability, which can result in muted public criticism and limited action.”The vice president of administration at Child Evangelism Fellowship, Fred Pry, tells the Sun in a written statement that Nigeria “continues to be one of the most dangerous places in the world for many Christians who endure kidnappings for ransom, targeted killings and religious persecution.”Mr. Pry says his group’s Nigeria team is in regular contact with local staff who “continue to serve faithfully despite these challenges,” and that the group’s ministry to children “remains unchanged” even as security concerns affect logistics in some areas.What Comes NextA designation is one thing; congressional appropriators want teeth behind it. House Appropriations and House Foreign Affairs investigators have laid out what that could look like: a bilateral security agreement with Nigeria, continued visa restrictions on perpetrators of anti-Christian violence, and trade leverage — including a possible block on beef and cattle exports — aimed at pressuring Fulani herders to disarm. Legislation now moving through Congress goes further, threatening to withhold a slice of American funding to Nigeria’s government until it takes real steps to protect its people.For Ms. Shea, the path forward runs through the villages themselves, not just the halls of Congress.“The US should provide training to Nigerian police and military forces in the Middle Belt to protect the Christian farming communities and priests and pastors and their churches there,” Ms. Shea asserts. “It should help the Christians to adopt tactics to protect themselves, such as with early warning networks, sheltering and defense.”She also wants Abuja to enforce its own gun laws against the militias.“It should press the Abuja government to prosecute and take action against these murderous raids against defenseless farming communities and enforce the National Firearms Act by disarming the Fulani jihadist militias, whose weapons of choice are AKs, which are banned under the law.”Mr. Abts, for his part, says the next step should be sustained accountability and monitoring. “The U.S. and international partners should support independent documentation of attacks, press for transparent investigations and prosecutions, and make protection of vulnerable civilian communities a higher priority in diplomatic engagement with Nigeria.”Nigerian colleagues working with Mr. Abts’ Equipping the Persecuted separately documented 44 more deaths across northern Nigeria in the week after Naridon.Security forces reportedly reached Naridon only after the attackers had already fled. For Kamaru ward, the real test isn’t Washington’s designation itself, but whether it translates into the on-the-ground protection — police training, disarmament, arrests — that congressional investigators and experts alike say has yet to materialize.“We also ask Christians everywhere to pray for those who have lost loved ones, for the safety of churches, ministry workers and the children they serve, and for wisdom for Nigeria’s leaders,” Mr. Pry says. “Christ’s hope is needed now more than ever.”

Religious Freedom Activists Demand Stronger Response to Massacres of Christians in Nigeria

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