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Christian Genocide in Nigeria

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The ongoing slaughter of Christians in Nigeria at the hands of Islamic extremists meets the established international standards for genocide, the Colson Center reports. The International Christian Concern advocacy group reported in 2020 that between 50,000 to 70,000 Christians have been killed by Islamic terrorists; the Open Doors USA advocacy group reported this year that one Nigerian Christian is killed for their faith every two hours, 13 a day, 372 a month.

Nigeria has around 96 million Christians, most of whom live in the south and work as farmers. They are persecuted by the Boko Haram Islamic terror organization and even more relentlessly by Fulani Muslim extremists. The Fulani have been especially dangerous to Christians as they have moved south, away from their territory in the north, to access water in the ongoing drought.

While most Fulani is peaceful, an element is radicalized and has systematically set about murdering Christians and burning down their homes and villages, destroying their crops, and driving many away.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari is a Fulani, and he has sought to downplay the slaughter by portraying it as a fight over land rather than a genocide based on religion.

“Though contemporary Fulani militancy reveals a struggle between nomadic herders and farmers going on for millennia, denying the religious dimensions of these attacks is pure propaganda,” the Colson Center said in its report. “Christian villages are deliberately targeted, Christian houses and churches are burned, and Christians driven off or slaughtered.”

“What has happened to Nigerian Christians meets the established international standards for genocide, the Colson Center said.

“For our Nigerian brothers and sisters, we can fight on two fronts. First, we must continue to lobby our government on behalf of suffering Christians, asking our officials to put pressure on Nigeria to take more decisive action against Boko Haram and the Fulani herdsmen. Second, we must lobby Heaven, for both our persecuted brothers and sisters and their persecutors, praying that God’s kingdom would advance and win even the jihadis to Jesus.”