Happy Easter! Alleluia! Christians around the world are celebrating the miraculous events of almost 2000 years ago: that Jesus of Nazareth was raised to a new and glorious life after having been crucified, dead, and buried. This joyful event was understood as the proof that His seemingly shameful death on a cross was actually the culmination of a life-long sacrifice to God the Father.
It is a joyful time for Christians. Yet, as they (this writer among them) celebrate, it is a good time to remind those who are free to worship and live their lives as servants of Jesus that there are many Christians who are imitating their Lord in His sufferings, being persecuted by governments, Islamist terror groups, or both.
Nigeria is the largest Christian country in Africa, with more than 80 million Christians. It is also the place where Christians are being attacked most—even outside of the northern states where Sharia law is officially enforced.
Last week, on Palm Sunday, attacks by suspected Fulani Islamist militants killed 51 Nigerian Christians in the country’s Plateau State. A report from Nigerian paper The Herald detailed the attacks, about which they lamented that the international press were nearly silent: “The coordinated assault targeted two predominantly Christian villages, with the worst carnage reported in Zikke village, Bassa County. Witnesses described a night of horror as gunmen stormed homes, setting them ablaze and killing entire families — including women, children, and the elderly — in what local leaders are calling a deliberate act of religious persecution.”
These are only some of the latest attacks by Islamists in this country. Tom Goodenough, writing for The Spectator Australia, has also reported on Islamist violence in the country’s Middle Belt Benue State. In 2024 alone, 549 people in the Catholic Makurdi Diocese were murdered—with many more kidnapped. Since 2015, Goodenough writes, over 3,700 Christians from this area have been murdered. Christians in this part of Nigeria are fearful about what Easter will bring, since holidays are often the occasion for more attacks delivered by Fulani tribesmen with high-powered weapons.
Indeed, in Southeast Nigeria alone, Crux reports, a new study by “the Catholic-inspired NGO International Society for Civil Liberty and the Rule of Law Intersociety” (known as Intersociety) shows that over 20,300 Christians have been killed since 2015 “by a plethora of jihadist organizations, including the Jihadist Fulani herdsmen, the Niger Delta jihadist militants, and the Jihadist Fulani bandits, the Fulani Muslim vigilantes as well as the Nigerian military deployed to the region.” (A 2023 report by Intersociety looking back to 2009 counted over 50,000 murders of Christians.)
Intersociety has accused governors in “the four eastern states of Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi and Imo of a complicit silence – a ‘silence of the graveyard.’” They allege that the governors are working with the Nigerian national government to allow the persecutions of Christians, as well as practitioners of traditional African religions by the Islamists. The NGO has created an international campaign to prevent the four governors from traveling to countries that defend the rights of citizens and protect religious freedom. The focus is on the U.S., U.K., Canada, and select European Union countries.
Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the aforementioned Catholic Makurdi Diocese and one of his priests, Father Remigius Ihyula, traveled to the U.S. last month to testify in front of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee about how “the quest to Islamize the land appears high on the agenda of some of the powerful and influential Muslims in Nigeria.” The two spoke about the Nigerian government’s deliberate refusal to stop the violence and land seizures.
The response of the Nigerian government was, unfortunately, swift and largely confirmed exactly what the bishop and priest were saying. Fr. Ihyula reported that he was contacted by the embassy in Nigeria that there “might be” an arrest warrant for him when he returned. Bishop Anagbe said he was called by a fellow bishop at 3 AM the night before his March 12 testimony to convey the message from Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: he had “better watch his words.”
The U.S. support for the two was encouraging, with the United States Diplomatic Mission in Nigeria sharing a lengthy message of support for the two Nigerians on X:
“The U.S. Mission in Nigeria is disturbed by this report of intimidation and threats against Nigerian religious leaders Bishop Wilfred Anagbe and Rev. Fr. Remigius because of their March 12 testimony before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) on the human rights situation in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. Freedom of expression is an essential human right and central to the function of democracy, in Nigeria and the United States. No one should be subject to threats for exercising that right. We call on all actors to respect Bishop Anagbe’s and Father Remigius’s right to speak freely without fear of retribution or retaliation.”
The reason this message is so cheering is that, though the first Trump administration had declared Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern due to its anti-Christian extremism, the Biden administration took the nation off the list without any justification.
There is movement, however, to right this wrong. GOP Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey introduced House Resolution 220 the day before Bishop Anagbe and Father Remigius testified. The resolution, “Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the need to designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, and for other purposes,” has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
This would be an important step toward helping the Christians of Nigeria. Last week, an article in the Nigerian publication Leadership reported that the federal government is denying any inaction or collusion with Islamist groups.
Despite the persecution that has been raging for over a decade, Nigerian Christians have been stalwart, lending support to the early Christian writer Tertullian’s claim that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Reports show that almost 90% of Nigerian Christians attend church once per week (as opposed to about a quarter of Americans).
While they want their government to protect them, they understand St. Paul’s testimony to the Philippians that he both counted “everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” and held to his faith in Christ in order that “I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
In this Easter season, Nigeria’s Christians deserve our advocacy for them, our admiration, and our prayers for them as they imitate the Lord and share his sufferings.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.
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