Bring hope to forgotten conflicts
14 November 2025
As the Panorama saga continues, another tension is rumbling. This time over Christian Persecution in Nigeria.
President Trump says: “Christianity is facing an existential threat.” The BBC reports: “…there is no evidence that Christians have been disproportionately targeted.”
Facts are misinterpreted. Opinions are split. The fallout could be huge.
What did Trump say?
Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed.
If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, guns-a-blazing, to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.
I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!
Fact-checking Trump
While his rhetoric is a jumble of bluster and hyperbole, Trump is right to spotlight the scale and severity of killings.
In central states, Fulani militia have attacked more than 700 villages since 2009. They target predominantly Christian communities in rural areas, driving villagers off their land and threatening anyone who seeks to return. At least 20,000 people have been killed, with countless others suffering life-changing injuries. Millions are displaced.
Veteran humanitarian journalist and Senior Programmes Manager for HART, Hassan John, says: “I have visited over 150 villages in central Nigeria, during and after attacks, and have witnessed the most unspeakable atrocities. Nearly all the victims are Christians. Many survivors have been forcibly displaced. It is too dangerous for them to return.”
The picture is different in Muslim-majority northern states, where the overwhelming demographic reality means that Muslims, not Christians, constitute the highest number of casualties caused by Boko Haram and its factions.
Eyewitness report
During HART’s most recent factfinding visit to central Nigeria, we travelled to two villages in Plateau State that were attacked by Fulani militia on 14 October 2025. Thirteen people were killed, including five children.
Eve, a 20-year-old mother of four, survived the attack. She recalls waking up at night to the sound of gunfire. She hid two of her children in a water barrel outside the home. She sheltered behind a door with the two youngest.
One of the children inside the barrel made a noise that alerted the attackers. Eve could hear the gunmen question the siblings about their parents’ whereabouts, and her children telling them their parents had already fled. The gunmen opened fire into the barrel, killing both children.
Such massacres are a weekly occurrence in central Nigeria. Yet there is no meaningful security or assistance for conflict-affected communities. If and when overseas aid reaches Nigeria, most of it is diverted to the north of the country.
What did the BBC say?
Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province [ISWAP] have wrought havoc in north-eastern Nigeria for more than a decade, killing thousands of people - however most of these have been Muslims.
In central Nigeria, there are also frequent clashes between mostly Muslim herders and farming groups, who are often Christian, over access to water and pasture.
Deadly cycles of tit-for-tat attacks have also seen thousands killed, but atrocities have been committed on both sides and human rights group [sic] say there is no evidence that Christians have been disproportionately targeted.
Fact-checking the BBC
The summary of attacks by Boko Haram and ISWAP is accurate, but the analysis of violence in central states is outdated by at least ten years.
It is misleading to report “there is no evidence that Christians have been disproportionately targeted” in central Nigeria. Survivors, journalists, civil society and NGOs persist in reporting the plight of predominantly Christian villages. The BBC’s disregard of their insights compounds a sense of injustice among neglected communities. It creates a disconnect between an ‘official’ narrative and the local people’s lived reality.
The BBC is right to clarify “atrocities have been committed on both sides.” In some cases, Christian vigilantes have formed counter-insurgency groups to protect their communities. It is mob justice, outside the rule of law, beyond the control of the army or police.
However, the violence is not “tit-for-tat”. The vast majority of verified victims in central states are Christians – a point emphasised by HART Patron, Lord Alton of Liverpool, as far back as 2018: “The asymmetry is stark and must be acknowledged […] In the face of the reports of violence collected by impartial human rights groups, there is no place here for, as it were, moral equivalence.”
The herder-farmer narrative is flawed. It implies that violence only occurs following disputes over land access, whereas attacks often take place outside the grazing season and beyond regular grazing routes. It suggests that violence only occurs between local actors, when indigenous Fulani herders are not always involved in the attacks. Perpetrators of atrocities are often drawn from armed groups in north-western states or the wider Lake Chad Basin.
Killings in central Nigeria are not “clashes”. These are persistent massacres by a well-armed and increasingly organised militia.
Beyond the headlines
Violence in Nigeria is not a single conflict. There are multiple armed non-state actors with often-similar but sometimes-different agendas. The challenge lies in resisting simple labels that conflate distinct groups and regional crises.
Nuances in central Nigeria are especially misunderstood. Fulani militia comprise only a tiny portion of the Fulani ethnic group – a diverse population with hundreds of clans spread across several countries. They are distinct from so-called Fulani bandits in the northwest, who mainly target Hausa Muslim communities, and Fulani in the northeast, many of whom are victims of attacks by Boko Haram.
Fulani militia attacks and periodic vigilante counter-attacks are driven by many factors, often specific to a local area’s history, geography, politics and ethno-linguistic make-up. This includes religious extremism (emphasised by Trump) and competition for land (highlighted by the BBC), as well as the rapid flow of illicit weapons, economic incentives linked to trading hostages for ransom, and impunity.
What next?
The BBC is conscious of all such complexities, but its rigid pursuit of balance has obscured true dynamics of the conflict in central states. Misinformation should be clarified. Commentators must report accurately the facts on the ground: Christians are disproportionately targeted.
Until Trump spoke out, there had been no sign of international engagement to bring these attacks to an end. This does not mean his remarks are 100% accurate or wholeheartedly welcomed. As one senior clergyman in Plateau State says: “Our cry has always been to our Government… America cannot save us.”
The onus remains on the Nigerian Government to respond – to enforce the rule of law to protect all its citizens, to ensure that complaints related to human rights violations are promptly investigated, to hold those responsible to account, and to provide humanitarian assistance to suffering communities.
For more information, see hart-uk.org/reports