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Did you know that Nigeria is one of the deadliest countries for Christians? With thousands killed in recent years amid ongoing violence and religious tension, television host and comedian Bill Maher notes that what’s been happening is considered mass “genocide.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “genocide” refers to the mass extermination of a people group. It was most commonly coined during Hitler’s persecution of the Jews or during Joseph Stalin’s Russian Revolution. Sadly, genocide is far from being eradicated in today’s society; it just goes under wraps more than we’d like to admit.
Today, Christian persecution is sweeping the headlines. Experts emphasize that the increasing crisis has not only involved religion, but also politics, poverty, and security. In the mess of news stories and interviews, how can we clarify what’s really happening? More importantly, what should we as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ understand beyond the headlines?
For months, politicians in Washington have protested that Islamist militants were systematically targeting Christians in Nigeria. According to BBC, recent threats have been the last straw. President Trump hasn’t just issued a threat to the Nigerian government if they continue to allow the “killing of Christians,” but that he pledged to “do things to Nigeria that Nigeria is not going to be happy about” and “go into that now-disgraced country guns-a-blazing.”
Scripturally, we know that more violence is never the solution to violence (Matthew 26:52). However, these recent affairs call for justice and action. Here are 3 things to know about the recent persecution of Nigerian Christians:
1. The Violence is Real, but the Causes Are Complex
While I wish I could write that the persecution isn’t true, I can’t. Christian persecution isn’t just happening, but it’s occurring rapidly and in mass accounts. According to reports on the Boko Harum Group, Nigeria has killed over 100,000 Christians since 2009 and burned 18,000 churches. Many of these accounts have been reported, but it’s also suspected that many cases of persecution also go undetected.
In many northern and central regions of Nigeria, Christians have suffered deadly attacks. From church burnings to kidnappings and murders, states like Kaduna, Plateau, and Benue are at the top of the list. Sadly, this violence isn’t just driven by religion, but by ethnic and resource tensions between largely Muslim Fulani herders and predominantly Christian farming communities. The competition over land and grazing rights has reached new heights, worsened by climate change, population growth, and weak governance.
Confidence McHarry, a senior security analyst at Africa-focussed consultancy SBM Intelligence, explains this tension well: “It might be ethnic in nature – they’re seeking to grab lands, they’re seeking to expand territory, but the more they displace communities and the more they attack worship centres, the more these things tend to get looked at in that light.”
With the addition and role of extremist groups like the Boko Haram and ISWAP added to this fire, groups that explicitly target Christians, but operate alongside other local conflicts, Christians are in danger: āChristianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” said Trump, but other groups are at risk as well. It’s not simply a matter of one group versus the other, but a tangled mess of ethnic, economic, and political issues. Amid the web, one thing is certain: Calling this crisis “religious” doesn’t just oversimplify the issue, but should draw our attention to it further.