Imagine a country rich in crude oil, gold, and nearly any other natural resource you can think of. Now, imagine that same country averages 26 killings per day. That country you pictured is Nigeria, a nation in West Africa. Over the last years, Nigeria’s rates of violence have been consistently alarming. Brutal catastrophes occur daily, with many of them going unreported. A large portion of attacks tend to take place against the Christian population in the country, and it is widely believed these attacks are religion-based. According to the UK Parliament Commons Library, Nigeria acquired the sixth place when the 2024 World Watch List ranked countries in which Christians face the most extreme persecution. Notwithstanding, there are others who credit attacks to arbitrariness, commonly saying attackers are more preoccupied with the money they’ll receive from kidnapping than the religion of the people they abduct.

From one point of view, the frequent violent strikes against Christians in Nigeria are displays of religious persecution. Expanding on the previous statistic, the UK Parliament Commons Library further stated, “82% of the 4,998 Christians martyred for faith-related reasons globally in 2023 occurred in Nigeria.” Using this percentage, we can estimate that out of every five murders, four happened in Nigeria. The article elaborates on this number with statistics gathered from the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, which approximates 642 Christians abducted, 119 attacks on communities with families, and 511 other attacks suffered.

Along with quantitative data, various sources provide qualitative data on assaults on Christians. An AP News article describes an instance where villagers in Northwestern Nigeria were preparing for a church service when gunmen invaded the area, shooting maniacally, abducting 62 people at minimum. Hostages were kept in captivity for a month, and family members were simultaneously selling belongings and farmland to afford the ransom price. The article details, “They got little food and sleep, were told to renounce Christianity, and saw two fellow hostages killed, ‘I told my people even if they see my dead body, they should not deny Jesus and they should remain strong,’ said the Rev. Micah Bulus,” demonstrating an occurrence where violence was rooted in faith. Additionally, a New York Times article recounted the worst massacre in Nigeria’s recent history, when 200 people were killed in Benue, a predominantly Christian area. Armed men stormed the village of Yelwata in June, and Pope Leo XIV condemned the event as a “terrible massacre.”

Nevertheless, another perspective refutes the idea of persecution and claims the attacks are not based upon the Christianity of the victims, but instead are common acts of violence. Namely, the New York Times expressed in an article that large amounts of violence are caused by land disputes. The author communicated, “In one region where many Christians have been killed, the Middle Belt, territorial conflicts between mostly Christian farmers and mostly Muslim herders have devolved into bloody land grabs.” This citation displays attacks that involve people of Christian faith who are attacked, but not on the basis of their religion. Other residents insist violence has long plagued Nigeria, that attackers do not ponder over your religion, and everyone is a potential victim. “All they want is just money from you. (Even) if you have money, sometimes they will kill you,” a man named Abdulmalik Saidu said to an AP News reporter, describing the activity of gunmen stalking the state of Zamfara.

Today’s society has turned a blind eye to atrocities if they occur on the African continent, since casualties are habitual, we view them as the norm. Whichever the cause of the attacks are, violence in Nigeria is a subject that requires a greater amount of recognition than it is currently receiving. Christian Nigerians and other citizens suffer hardship at the hands of a neglectful government. Every life lost is a result of the ineffective Nigerian authority, which is failing its primary purpose: protecting the Nigerian people. In a world where interconnectedness is prominent, why have we ignored such a detrimental issue?