Are Nigerian Christians Persecuted?

The Nigerian Christian community has been shaken by a recent address given in Rome by Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah during the launch of Aid to the Church in Need’s 2025 Religious Freedom in the World Report. In his remarks, the Bishop of Sokoto acknowledged the widespread violence and insecurity ravaging Nigeria but questioned whether Christians in the country are being persecuted in the strict sense. While he condemned “murderous gangs of jihadists” who have “turned huge swathes of the Nigerian landscape into a killing field,” he also insisted that “we are not dealing with people going around wielding machetes and looking for me in order to kill me because I am a Christian.” Bishop Kukah cautioned against re-designating Nigeria as a “Country of Concern,” arguing that such a move would “hurt the initiatives we are working on with the current government to collectively resolve the nagging problems of…the persecution of Christians.” He went on to praise the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for “confidence-building measures” that, he said, show “a government willing to listen.”

Only months earlier, another Nigerian prelate—Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of Makurdi—had testified before the American Congress that Christians in Nigeria were indeed victims of systemic and targeted persecution. For his testimony, he was reportedly harassed and investigated by agents of the Nigerian federal government. His passionate defense of the faith community’s suffering stood in sharp contrast to Bishop Kukah’s transmission of this same sentiment of the people’s suffering but in conciliatory and diplomatic language in Rome.

The two bishops’ differing perspectives—one prophetic and denunciatory, the other diplomatic and conciliatory—have laid bare the painful tension within the Nigerian Church over how to speak truth to power in a time of blood and national anxiety and anger. These perspectives represent two approaches to meeting the unacceptable situation in Nigeria: the need for prophetic lament, resistance, and protest against state and non-state actors who have waged a war of attrition against the Christian mission; and the pastoral, diplomatic approach that seeks to engage the government through conciliation and negotiation. This reveals a deeper question facing the Nigerian Church: how should shepherds speak when their flock bleeds?

Bishop Kukah has been a consistent champion for a robust engagement of the Church in Nigeria’s politics. However, it is hard to see the evangelical fruits of such engagement for the Christian community in Nigeria. Familiarity with power often leads to compromises that may bring temporary relief to Church leaders while potentially doing permanent harm to the Christian mission—even when that is not their intent. This is why the Church in its wisdom is cautious in its relationship with the state especially corrupt and extractive leaders who destroy the common good through what French social scientist and postcolonial commentator, Jean-François Bayart, calls the politics of the stomach (la politique du ventre).

Nigerian Church leaders, therefore, cannot give any impression in the eyes of the Nigerian Christians that they are appeasing the government of the day or have found favor with the state.  The priorities and interests of the state and of politicians shift like the weather, driven by expediency, electoral gain, raw political power to dominate and preservation of their hold on Nigeria’s fast depleting oil wealth. The mission of the Church, however, possesses a deeper and more enduring rhythm—the stability of grace and the constancy of divine love and the mission of bringing about in small ways the fruits of the eschatological reign of God. To confuse these temporal orders or to align the eternal mission of the Church with the transient ambitions of political power through appeasement or comfortable relationship with Nigeria’s corrupt ruling class is to betray the very heart of the Gospel. C.S. Lewis once warned against this danger with prophetic clarity: “He who marries the spirit of the age will soon find himself a widower.” Though often paraphrased, this line distills a profound truth about the perennial temptation of religion to seek cultural or political approval. Lewis’s insight echoes the wisdom of Augustine, who distinguished between the City of God and the earthly city: the Church must dwell in the world but not be possessed by its powers.

However, the current debate goes beyond a single speech. It is a catalytic moment for the Nigerian Church. When Christians cry out for religious freedom and protection amid radical Islamic fundamentalism, silence becomes complicity, careless speech can inflame fragile peace, and disunity can prolong our long night. The path forward must be neither denial nor despair, but discernment—a rediscovery of the Church’s vocation to speak truth to power in love, to bear the wounds of the people without surrendering to anger or fear. As Pope Francis reminds us, fraternity is forged not in agreement but in shared suffering. The Nigerian Church stands today at such a threshold: called to lamentation as resistance, prophetic denunciation, and the bold proclamation of Gospel nonviolence tested in charity.

The pain of the Nigerian Christian community is deep; the sense of injustice is evident in the denial of Christian rights in many predominantly Muslim states that embraced Sharia and restrict Christians’ freedom of worship. The threats, fear, and anxiety are palpable, and religious freedom has never been so endangered. There is an architecture of structural violence and injustice that has destroyed social life, eroded the social compact, and turned ordinary existence into a cycle of fear and death. Christian communities have borne the brunt of this context created by leadership failures, corruption, and the collusion of political and religious elites.

In the last decade alone, the Christian community has endured a scale of violence that shocks the conscience. More than 52,000 Christians have been murdered since 2009; over 18,500 churches and Christian institutions have been attacked or destroyed; and in 2025 alone, more than 7,000 Christians were killed—an average of 32 deaths every day . At least 1,200 churches are destroyed annually, and hundreds of priests, religious, and catechists have been kidnapped, tortured, or murdered. Many others live in camps for the internally displaced. In the Middle Belt, Christian villages have been emptied of their inhabitants, while in the North, believers are denied land to build churches, prevented from teaching Christian religious education in schools, subjected to blasphemy laws under Sharia, or excluded from public service. No one has been held to account, nor has the government—past or present—shown the courage to protect Christian lives or secure justice. Christianity is under attack in Nigeria. While some Muslim communities have also suffered, most assaults are directed at Christians and often perpetrated by groups invoking Islam as justification. Muslim leaders may condemn extremists as “not representing the true face of Islam,” yet few have stood in solidarity or crossed into our churches to weep with those who weep.

Christians and Muslims must negotiate coexistence in a peaceful Nigeria as long as Christian religious leaders refuse to be co-opted by the state into tranquilizing the just rage of the people. Yet the challenge before both faiths remains grave. Although Christians have experienced extraordinary numerical increase—rising from 176,000 in 1900 to around 95 million in 2020 (46.3%) according to the World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE) and projected to reach 197 million by 2060 (48%)—data for Muslims show near parity or slight advantage (46.2% now, projected 48.7% by 2050). Thus, while Christianity is expanding, it does not clearly outpace Islam, whose growth is driven by higher fertility rates in Muslim-majority states.

In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis calls the Church to build “a culture of encounter” where truth and compassion walk hand in hand. He warns that when truth is weaponized, it “becomes cold, distant, and unfeeling,” yet when compassion is detached from truth, it “degenerates into sentimentality or manipulation” (FT 184). This tension mirrors Nigeria’s own ecclesial moment. The unity of the Church lies not in one script but in one heart—Christ’s wounded heart. Pope Francis writes that “authentic social dialogue involves the ability to respect the other’s point of view and to admit that it may contain legitimate convictions or concerns” (FT 203). Bishop Anagbe’s cry from Makurdi and Bishop Kukah’s appeal from Rome are not contradictions but two voices of the same body—the cry of pain and the call for healing. The Church must hold them in a creative tension that leads to communion.

The tension between Christianity and Islam in Nigeria is not merely a contest of numbers but of witness. Both faiths are locked in a demographic and sociocultural rivalry as well as contestation for power that shapes the nation’s soul. The Christian community must interpret its expansion not as numerical triumph but as a call to service and solidarity in a society where faith, justice, and peace are deeply intertwined and where the Christian mission and message may well be the only balm for a wounded nation, and the only uncompromising voice that can stir the conscience of the nation, and steer the land away from this dangerous and darkening plain.

Pope Leo XIV’s Dilexi Te returns the Church to the wellspring of divine love: “I have loved you.” In this love, truth becomes an act of solidarity. The Holy Father insists that “truth without tenderness ceases to be evangelical; love without justice ceases to be divine.” Dilexi Te situates the preferential option for the poor as the crucible where both truth and unity are purified. For Nigeria, this means that the credibility of the Church depends not on alignment with power but on her willingness to suffer with the poor and persecuted. To love Nigeria truthfully is to name its wounds without fear and to bind them without resentment or facile diplomatic language which the wily and vile Nigerian politicians have learned to live with. The Nigerian bishops, though differing in tone, must rediscover the shared vocation of pastoral courage—a love that tells the truth even when it hurts, and a truth that heals even when it convicts.

In essence, Bishop Kukah’s speech sought to balance truth-telling with bridge-building. He acknowledged Christian suffering but placed it within a wider national tragedy affecting all Nigerians. Yet in doing so, he missed the deep anguish of believers living under the shadow of violence and fear. His words, intended as a pastoral appeal for dialogue and national harmony, have instead exposed the fractures within the Nigerian Church—between shepherds who prefer diplomacy with the powers that be and those who speak from the crucible of suffering of the poor of the land who inhabit the existential peripheries of life. This moment calls not for division among the Christian community of Nigeria but discernment—for a Church that listens to both its cautious diplomats and its wounded prophets, yet finds one united courageous voice of truth, love, common cause with the long-suffering Nigerian Christians, and solidarity for a nation bleeding at the heart. Augustine reminded us that the Church must dwell in the world but not be possessed by it. When pastors wed themselves to the spirit of the age, they reveal not the poor man of Galilee but our all-too-human thirst for power and relevance.

Given the corruption of the state and the government’s failure to protect lives and property, Christian bodies—the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), and the Pentecostal Federation of Nigeria (PFN)—should consider a moratorium on receiving donations from governments as a prophetic act of protest. Accepting favors and patronage from politicians in this current dispensation is a counter-witness to the Gospel. Hobnobbing, wining and dining with those responsible for the nation’s moral decay, the heart wrenching suffering of our people and the persecution of Christians borders on heresy and betrays the Gospel.

Church leaders must also collaborate with theologians, political analysts, canonists, and lawyers so that public statements emerge from prayerful reflection and sound analysis. Their witness must be prophetic, grounded in data, and born of the tears and faith of a wounded people who, like Mary, are standing strong at the foot of the Cross. From St Theresa’s Church, Madalla, to St Francis Church, Owo; from Yelwata’s killing fields to Kafin Koro’s quiet plains; from Good Shepherd Seminary, Kaduna, where Michael Nnadi of Sokoto diocese was murdered, to St Albert the Great Seminary, Fayit, and Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary, Auchi—the blood of Nigeria’s martyrs and the heart of the Christian future in Nigeria ( through the killing of young seminarians) cries to heaven.

Our Christians are dying every day, and the poor of the land are crying, yet we as religious leaders often ignore their pain, minimize their suffering, or treat their deaths as part of the price that the weak must pay for the future of the Church and nation—an illusion sustained by political and religious elites who benefit from the status quo. It is, however, a reflection of the colonial mentality that we are fighting each other over whether the United States should designate Nigeria as a country of concern for religious freedom or over what Aid to the Church in Need has documented about us. Nigeria indeed needs the help of the international community, and Pope Leo has added his voice to calls for the protection of and justice for Christians in a peaceful Nigeria, but the rot in Nigeria and the task of cleaning this mess, restoring trust, and building an inclusive state belongs to Nigerians both at home and abroad.

The mission of saving Nigeria and renewing the Christian witness must begin from within—from leaders who listen to the poor, walk among them, and, as Dilexi Te (61) proposes, learn from them as the Church’s best teachers and mediate their narratives in our utterances. We must allow their wounds and tears to awaken us from our dangerous closeness to the powerful of this world, lest we mediate the deceptive narratives of hope by politicians built on a machinery that has turned Nigeria into a valley of tears and ungovernable spaces. To ignore or minimize the suffering of our people is to betray them. Nigeria is already a nation of concern before God because God listens to the cries of the poor and is concerned about their tears. U.S politicians might use our tears to advance a white Christian nationalist agenda and label us for their own political gains, but our God is concerned about us and has made a preferential option for and with the poor of Nigeria and will bring down the mighty in Nigeria who oppress God’s people. If not now, then certainly later. The Church in Nigeria must make common cause with her poor and persecuted members in both the words, and actions of our Church leaders. Only by embracing the suffering of the people can the Church in Nigeria rediscover its prophetic soul and become a sign of hope and a means for God’s liberation of the poor in a land overshadowed by fear and dripping with sour grapes of injustice, mistrust, civic, and moral fatigue, and national ennui.

This is one of possible arguments on this topic. VoiceAfrique invites our readers, pastors, theologians, and public intellectuals to contribute to this urgent conversation: Are Nigerian Christians  Persecuted? The debate around Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah’s address in Rome and Bishop Wilfred Anagbe’s testimony before the U.S. Congress have reopened deep questions about faith, truth, and witness in a wounded nation. We welcome thoughtful essays, pastoral reflections, or commentaries (800–1200 words) that speak to the lived experience of the Church in Nigeria—its suffering, resilience, and prophetic voice. How should Christians interpret this moment? What does authentic witness look like amid fear, division, and hope?

Send contributions to coordinating.servant@pactpan.org Together, let us discern how the Nigerian Church can speak with one heart for a nation in pain.

—Stan Chu Ilo, Editor-in-Chief