Blood-soaked Nigeria: 30 Christians killed every day in 2025

Translated by Beatrice Cherubini

According to the report “Martyred Christians in Nigeria” by Intersociety, more than 7,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria by Islamic extremists since the beginning of the year. A figure not far from the number of the Nigerian Christians abducted over the same period, which, based on data collected by the NGO located in the southeast of the country, is estimated at around 7,800 people. These figures from the report, combined with data from previous years, present a stark picture of the crisis, with more than 52,000 Christian victims of jihadist violence recorded in Nigeria since 2009.

A sharp increase in violence against Christian communities has also affected places of worship, with over 19,000 churches vandalised and burned in the past decade. A wave of brutality, which has escalated significantly following the inauguration of Bola Tinubu, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in May 2023, has led several Western media outlets — including HBO and Fox News — to speak of a “Christian genocide”.

“I'm not a Christian, but Christians in Nigeria are being systematically killed”, said American TV host Bill Maher during his Real Time show on September 26, highlighting that what has been happening for years in the African country is “a much more serious attempt at genocide than what’s happening in Gaza”. However, as pointed out by Al Jazeera, behind the crimes committed against Christians is the Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram, which emerged in 2009 in northern Nigeria and immediately set itself against the Nigerian state as a whole, rather than targeting a single religious group.

Founded in Nigeria’s Borno State with the aim of seizing control from the Federal Republic, the group has claimed the lives of Christians and Muslims alike, spreading across the country and fueling violence in a society already plagued by banditry and organized crime. The Intersociety report also indicated that more than 20 new jihadist terrorist groups have formed in recent years, attributing the rise in crimes against Christians in the country to this uncontrolled spread of radicalism.

The same NGO also highlights that moderate Muslim communities have likewise suffered, particularly in the northern regions, caught up in the fury of rebels blinded by faith and long-standing ethnic and intertribal rivalries, with over 34,000 victims reported. According to the Nigerian author Gimba Kakanda, the conflicts that characterize the country are “multi-faceted”, often fueled by disputes over land and resources, with religion playing a “secondary” role. The acts of violence directly linked to faith represent “only a fraction of Nigeria’s homicides, though a terrible one”, and this, Kakanda continues, demonstrates both the systemic nature of violent crime within the country and the impossibility of defining it as being directed solely against a single ethnic or religious group.

Mondo Internazionale APS - Riproduzione Riservata ® 2025