The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has issued a statement clarifying its position on ongoing attacks on Christian communities, particularly in the north of Nigeria, in light of significant efforts to deny their existence and severity.
In the statement signed by the President of CAN Archbishop Daniel Okoh, the Association ‘affirms, without hesitation, that many Christian communities in parts of Nigeria, especially in the North, have suffered severe attacks, loss of life, and the destruction of places of worship. These realities are painful reminders of the urgent need for government and security agencies to act decisively to protect every citizen, regardless of region.’
‘Our concern remains that these cries for justice and protection are too often met with delay or denial,’ the statement continues. ‘We therefore renew our call on government and security agencies to take urgent, transparent, and equitable action to end the killings, safeguard vulnerable Christian communities from displacement, and ensure that perpetrators face the full weight of the law. The pain of Christian families torn apart by violence must never be treated as mere statistics.’
The clarification follows the earlier publication of a comment in Nigerian media attributed to a CAN official and portrayed erroneously as being CAN’s official position, which had refuted claims made by US comedian Bill Maher of an ongoing genocide against Christians, and had asserted that ‘the pattern of killings has truly not been in a particular pattern’. The comment was made amid a flurry of actions both in the US and Nigeria seeking to either offset or support the redesignation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 in November.
Several Members of Congress are championing Nigeria’s return to the list, including Senator Ted Cruz, who has introduced a Bill entitled ‘Nigeria Religious Freedom Act of 2025’ which seeks to hold Nigerian officials accountable, and to sanction those enforcing blasphemy laws.
Nigeria is facing multifaceted security challenges with civilians terrorised by several armed non-state actors, including some driven by religious extremism, or instrumentalising religion and/or ethnicity as rallying points, such as Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Ansaru, Lakurawa and Mahmuda.
In addition, violence by an irregular armed group, or militia, comprising members of Fulani ethnicity has been underway in predominantly Christian Plateau state since March 2010. Attacks on non-Muslim communities elsewhere in central Nigeria, also known as the Middlebelt, have been ongoing since 2011, but increased exponentially in 2015, as the progressively well-armed militia targeted Christian farming communities in Bauchi, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba states and the southern part of Kaduna state.
Insufficient action by successive governments, and alleged complicity by elements in the security forces, has allowed this threat to metastasise, with Fulani militia increasingly targeting ethnic Hausa Muslim communities in the northwest with murder, rape, kidnapping, and extortion.
CSW-Nigeria’s Chief Executive Officer Reverend Yunusa Nmadu said: ‘The fact that Nigeria is currently experiencing extreme and unprecedented levels of insecurity that is affecting citizens of every creed and strata correlates directly with the failure of successive administrations to address the targeted attacks on religious and belief communities which continue to this day. CSW echoes CAN’s call for urgent action to end the targeted killings of Christians in northern and central Nigeria, and also appeals to the government to secure the nation as a whole as a matter of urgency. We welcome the increased attention this situation has received in recent weeks, and call for the establishment of an independent international investigative body to look into the situation of freedom of religion or belief in the centre and north, where mass killings and forced displacement bear the hallmarks of atrocity crimes, and where systematic discrimination in Shari’a states in particular, could meet the international definition of religious persecution.’