Nigeria has become ground zero for a modern-day assault on Christianity, and honest Americans need to hear the truth. A Nigeria-based watchdog says the toll is staggering: since 2009 as many as 125,000 Christians have been killed, some 19,100 churches attacked or burned, and more than 1,100 Christian communities looted or displaced. These are not anonymous statistics — they are the corpses of neighbors, the smoldering shells of churches, and the orphaned children of a faith under siege.
Other respected monitoring groups tell the same grim story in different numbers, but the bottom line is unmistakable: thousands of believers are being slaughtered and abducted every year. Open Doors and similar organizations report that Nigeria accounts for more Christian deaths annually than nearly any other nation, with nearly 5,000 killed in a single recent year according to some tallies. This is not random violence; it is a sustained campaign that targets Christian identity and institutions, and the discrepancy in reported totals only underscores how badly this crisis has been undercounted by the global media.
Who is carrying out this terror? Islamist terror cells like Boko Haram and the Islamic State’s West Africa Province, together with heavily armed Fulani militants who often operate like militias, are behind wave after wave of massacres and church burnings. These groups have turned once-peaceful farming communities into killing fields and have driven millions into displacement camps where hunger and lawlessness replace parish life. Our allies in the West must stop pretending this is merely “ethnic” or “resource” conflict — the religious element is plain and deliberate.
Even worse, the Nigerian government has a record of downplaying or deflecting blame, while Western policymakers have sometimes looked the other way. The U.S. State Department briefly designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern in 2020, only for that designation to be inexplicably removed in 2021, a move that human rights advocates and congressional leaders rightly criticized as abandoning persecuted Christians. If the world’s leading freedom-loving nation refuses to call out persecution when it is this blatant, who will stand for the defenseless?
This Sunday, November 2, churches worldwide will observe the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church — a small but powerful act of solidarity that means everything to believers trapped in terror zones. Global ministries and prayer networks are coordinating resources and testimonies to lift up those who cannot worship freely and to remind them they are not forgotten. Faith without action is hollow; prayer must be coupled with political pressure and concrete help for displaced families and threatened pastors.
America and its allies should act like the moral leaders we claim to be: restore Nigeria’s CPC status, appoint a special envoy for Nigerian religious freedom, impose targeted sanctions on the commanders of militias and jihadist groups, and support legitimate Nigerian forces that actually protect civilians. Conservative voters and faith communities must demand that our government stop treating this as background noise and start using every diplomatic and legal tool to stop the slaughter. Silence from Washington is complicity; our Judeo-Christian values demand better.
The good news — and it is real — is that Nigerian Christians are not cowering. They worship in secret, return to rebuild burned sanctuaries, and refuse to trade their faith for safety. As patriotic Americans who believe in religious liberty, we must amplify their courage with our voices, our votes, and our prayers this November 2. Their blood cries out for justice, and we must answer.
