Brad Brandon has been sounding the alarm about what he calls a targeted campaign against Christians in Nigeria, and he’s not taking the media’s downplaying lying down. As founder and CEO of Across Nigeria, Brandon has spent years on the ground in the most dangerous regions and refuses to let the scale of this human catastrophe be buried by intellectuals and diplomats who prefer nuance to truth. Americans who care about religious liberty should listen when a man with boots-on-the-ground testimony insists this is persecution, not a mere “conflict.”
Independent investigators and faith-based groups have produced staggering tallies that cannot be ignored: reports from organizations tracking violence claim more than 50,000 Christians have been killed since the 2009 Islamist uprising, with thousands of churches burned and millions uprooted from ancestral lands. These figures come from field investigations and victim interviews that mainstream outlets rush past because the numbers offend a preferred narrative about “resource conflict.” If you refuse to name evil for what it is, you’ll never stop it.
Nigeria’s government, predictably, has pushed back — desperately — on these claims, with Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar telling Western interviewers that the higher death tolls are “inaccurate” and offering far smaller official figures for recent years. That official denial is convenient and politically useful, but it carries the hollow ring of a regime more interested in optics than justice for grieving families. When governments scrub inconvenient truths, brave citizens and independent investigators must force the daylight in.
At the same time, reputable conflict monitors and international reporting make clear the situation is tragically complex: jihadist groups like Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa, violent bandits, and communal herder‑farmer clashes all feed a landscape of chaos where Christians are disproportionately victimized in many regions. Those facts don’t erase conscious targeting of believers; they explain why the West must be smart and decisive in its response rather than posture with polite condemnations. The moral clarity demanded by American conservatives is simple — protect the innocent, expose the perpetrators, and stop pretending this is merely an internal matter.
The human toll is not just numbers on a page: millions of Nigerians have been forced into displacement camps or scattered into squalor, and entire Christian communities have been uprooted and left without protection. UN and independent displacement monitors have documented millions of people driven from their homes by decades of violence, a crisis that should shame every government that claims to uphold human rights but tolerates sectarian slaughter. If we profess to value freedom, we must stand with the vulnerable — not with the silence of convenience.
President Trump and others in Washington have begun to call out the crisis, and that attention is warranted; America was founded on rugged defense of conscience and must not avert its eyes when Christians are hunted for their faith. Yet critics warn that heavy-handed military posturing without careful diplomacy and respect for sovereignty could blow back; that’s fair, but it cannot be used as a get-out-of-accountability-free card for the perpetrators or the enablers. The correct response is bold, targeted, and principled — sanctions, diplomatic pressure, humanitarian aid, and support for real on-the-ground partners who protect believers.
Brad Brandon and groups like Across Nigeria are doing the gritty work others won’t: sheltering refugees, reopening schools, and building underground networks of faith and relief in hostile territory. Conservatives who believe in religious freedom and the dignity of human life should back those boots-on-the-ground efforts and demand that Western governments stop gaslighting the suffering and start delivering real help. If America stands for anything, it must stand with those who are being persecuted for refusing to renounce their faith.
