Terrorists Use Vast Network of Villages to Persecute Locals

Nigerian Christians say their communities are under attack by Islamist “predators” whose desire is nothing less than genocide.

Often portrayed as small bands of criminals, the Fulani militants preying on these victims carry out kidnappings and murder; they have developed a vast, well-organized system of persecution through a network of villages.

The Catholic News Agency (CNA) this week reported that Islamists have a strategy to “annihilate” Nigeria’s millions of Christians and “Islamize the country.” “We have documented the coordinated and systematic murder of an entire people; therefore, we are clearly talking about a Christian genocide,” said Criminologist Emeka Umeagbalasi, director of the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersocial).

“Today in northern Nigeria,” Umeagbalasi continued, “it’s almost impossible to live as a Christian, and if the trend continues, within half a century we will no longer be a country with religious pluralism.”

“No one dares to openly confess their faith. If you do, you risk being killed for ‘blasphemy,’” he said.

What was so shocking about Umeagbalasi’s allegations was his contention that the Nigerian government was “complicit” in this “systematic strategy to achieve the extermination of Christians,” while the international community has been indifferent to the fate of the victims.

“Complicity is part of an expansive policy by the Nigerian government to Islamize the country,” he said, noting that the president between 2015 and 2023, Muhammadu Buhari, comes from the same Fulani Muslim tribes that are killing and abducting Christians in horrific numbers. Buhari’s successor, the current President, Bola Tinubu, was Buhari’s choice to follow him. Tinubu is an ethnic Yoruba, but also Muslim.

Umeagbalasi explained that despite Buhari’s promises to control terrorist groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), those groups have grown significantly more powerful and predatory during his reign. Nigerian security forces do little to prevent constant raids on Christian villages, dismissing them as mere “local community crimes.”

More than 850 Christians remain captive in several camps in the Rijana area, very close to a military base. This began in December 2024; many remain held by jihadists to this day. Between December and August 2025, more than 100 prisoners were killed there. How is it possible that all this is happening just a few kilometers from military installations without anyone taking action?

Among the latest victims abducted on Monday was Alhaji Alhassan Bawa Niworo, former chairman of the Niger State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB). Niworo and several other victims were captured when terrorists set up roadblocks to stopped their convoy.

A few hostages were freed after large ransoms were paid to the kidnappers. The recovered victims disclosed that they were shuffled throughout a network of villages that serve as camps for the terrorists.

Open Doors, a Christian persecution watchdog group, published an interview last week with a Christian farming family that dared to return to their village to gather food after Fulani militants drove them away. The militants caught them and dragged two women from the family away to their camp to be repeatedly violated.

Truth Nigeria reports that victims who have been rescued from Nigeria’s southern Rijana Forest region said it contains at least 21 terrorist camps, earning it the nickname “Forest of Hostages.”

Survivors of these camps described them as brutal installations where hostages were fed nothing but cornmeal or starved for days on end, and were brutally beaten by their captors. Kidnapping victims whose families could not afford to pay ransom were often executed.

Intersociety researchers corroborated Umeagbalasi’s accusation that the Nigerian military grew less professional, less attentive, and more likely to actively aid the Islamists under Buhari’s government. The researchers described the relationship between Nigerian troops and the jihadis as something akin to a “romance.”

Persecution of Nigeria’s Christians is made easier by the Tinubu government’s insistence on keeping them disarmed and helpless.

Dr. Bitrus Pogu, president of a group called the Middle Belt Forum that represents over 45 million Christians, told Genocide Watch in August that the Nigerian military is very reluctant to pursue terrorists even when it knows where they are hiding, but will crack down hard on Christian villages that attempt to defend themselves.

“If our youths try to defend their communities, the military storms in, arrests them, confiscates their locally made pipe guns, tortures them, and hands them over to the police. The police, in turn, brutalize and detain them without due process,” Pogu said.

Genocide Watch collected other testimonials from Christian villagers and local officials who accused the military of ignoring or abetting Islamist militants. Several of them mentioned the Nigerian military’s insistence on disarming Christian militias and vigilantes.

The executive director of Intersociety, Emeka Umeagbalasi, told The Tablet, The International Catholic News Weekly, that the Nigerian military had become “the jihadist forces of Nigeria,” accusing it of turning against the people it is supposed to protect.

Frederick Andrew Wolf