Report: In Nigeria, 'Jihadist' Militants Killed 8,000 Christians Over the Past Year
NGO Blames Islamic Militants for 150,000 Killings Since 2009
By Gary Gately
Islamic militants killed more than 8,000 Christians in Nigeria last year, according to a new report that documents 150,000 religiously motivated killings in a “jihadist genocide” since Boko Haram began its reign of terror in 2009.
The report by the nongovernmental organization International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) details a horrific record of killings, kidnappings, torture and forced disappearances since 2009.
Since then, Intersociety says, tens of thousands of homes, more than 18,500 Christian places of worship, 1,000 shrines and 2,500 Christian education centers have been destroyed.
Intersociety lays much of the blame for the killings of Christians — up from 5,068 in 2022 — on the “woeful failure of the government and the country’s security forces to rise to the occasion” to stem the violence against Christians. That, in turn, enables the militant groups to continue their violence targeting Christians with impunity, the report said.
“The combined forces of the government-protected Islamic jihadists and the country’s security forces are directly and vicariously accountable for hacking to death in 2023 of no fewer than 8,222 defenseless Christians,” the report said.
It describes the alarming number of Christian deaths as a “farewell gift” to the “genocidal government” of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who led the country from 2015 until last May, and a “welcome gift” to the new government of President Bola Tinubu. Both have been accused of “radical Islamism” underlying their support of the anti-Christian terrorists.
Since Boko Haram began its murderous campaign in northern Sharia (Islamic law) states in 2009, 100,000 Christians, 46,000 moderate Muslims and 4,000 of other faiths have been killed by Muslim extremists, the report says.
Since 2009, Intersociety reports, millions of Christians and moderate Muslims have been forced to flee their homes, and some crossed international borders because of threats based on their religion.
Meanwhile, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, Archbishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, told the conference on Sunday: “In the face of increasing violent crimes, the country stands on the brink of anarchy.”
He urged the Tinubu government to “take urgent steps to rise to its primary responsibility of securing the lives and property of its citizens.”
Along with bolstering security to take on the Islamic militant groups and protect Christians, Ugorji called on Tinubu’s government to generate employment for citizens, especially youths, as a way of stemming the violence, and to root out government corruption.
“It will be belaboring the obvious to state that security in our country will remain a tall dream if mass unemployment exists among our youths,” he said
Ugorji cited the December 23-28 killings of at least 200 Christians by jihadist Fulani Muslim herders, who have been implicated in a spate of killings of Christians in Nigeria, as an example of “how fruitless the government’s reform efforts have been in securing its citizens.”
The Intersociety report blamed the violence targeting Christians over the past year on Fulani Muslim herders, Boko Haram and their allies, jihadist Fulani Bandits and “Islamic-inspired” security forces.
The slaughter of Christians in Nigeria amounts to a “silent genocide,” the Intersociety report said, receiving scant attention in global media and among world leaders.
In the past 15 years, the civilian death toll in Nigeria has been the second highest in the world, exceeded only by that of Syria, with about 306,000 civilian deaths in the civil war in that county since 2011, the report says.
According to the International Alliance against Genocide, Nigeria is among 14 ongoing genocides in the world.
The Vatican Dicastery for Evangelization has expressed its “deepest and heartfelt solidarity” to the Nigerian people.
In a message to Nigerian prelates published by the Fides Agency, the Dicastery said: "Nothing can justify the evil of kidnapping. The physical violence and accompanying mental torture that go with kidnapping undermine the pillars of civil and social harmony, as they traumatize the individuals involved, their families and the society in general.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the bishops, clergy and religious, seminarians, the devout members of the Church, all Christians and people of good will across the nation.”
But Nigerian Catholics have remained steadfast in their faith.
A study published last year by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that 94% of the estimated 30 million Nigerians who identify as Catholics attend Mass daily or weekly. That’s among the highest rates of Mass attendance in the world.
In its report, Intersociety recommended:
Launching a United Nations investigation into Islamic militants’ killings, kidnappings, forced migrations, torture, looting, sexual violence and forced faith conversions of Christians. The report says the campaign of violence and destruction targeting Christians, part of “systematic and well-coordinated government-protected Islamic jihadists,” violates the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their protocols and other international human rights and humanitarian laws or conventions.
The UN relying on its “big stick” to provide resettlement, re-integration and compensation to “victims of heinous crimes” and criminal investigation and arrest, trial and conviction of individual and group perpetrators, including state actors and group and individual non-state actors.
Making the massacre of Christians in Nigeria a “cardinal campaign issue” in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The report recommends that African Americans wage a “frontal attack” on Republicans and Democrats to demand an end to persecution of Christians in Nigeria.
Establishing a UN Military and Humanitarian Mission in Nigeria charged with “checkmating grisly and egregious terror attacks” by Islamic militant groups and their international affiliates.
The U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France and Germany linking humanitarian and military aid to Nigeria to the country treating all Nigerians equally and governing “pluralistically, irrespective of their ethnic or religious groupings or affiliations.”
Nigeria’s government being compelled by the UN and the international community to arrest and try leaders of the jihadist Fulani Herdsmen, the jihadist Fulani Bandits and affiliated groups by the International Criminal Court or inviting the International Criminal Court to do so if the government is unable or unwilling to. The government must also stop “pampering Boko Haram terrorists,” the report said.
Disbanding any company that has seized or annexed lands belonging to displaced Christians and their communities and the leaders of the companies arrested.