Daily Trust Editorial, Tuesday October 28, 2025
A Bill designated S. 2747, titled “Nigerian Freedom Accountability Act of 2025” has been presented to the American Senate which when passed will require the government of the United States of America to tag Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).
The bill, sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz of from Texas, followed representations from several Christian groups in Nigeria claiming that Nigerians of the Christian faith are being targeted and killed in their hundreds of thousands in what is termed “genocidal killings.”
Emeka Umeagbalasi, Director of Intersociety, an NGO affiliated to the Catholic Church stated that the situation shows a “deeply disturbing statistics of violence in Nigeria spanning from 2010 to 2025, revealing a campaign of devastation that has claimed 185,000 lives including 125,000 Christians and 60,000 nonviolent Muslims.”
Umeagbalasi further stated that the “physical landscape of faith has also been ravaged, with 19,000 churches burned to the ground and 1,100 entire Christian communities seized and occupied by jihadist forces allegedly backed or protected by the government.”
In a statement refuting the claim, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris stated that: “Allegations by certain international platforms and online influencers suggesting that terrorists operating in Nigeria are engaged in a systematic genocide against Christians are false, baseless, despicable and divisive.” The Minister added that: “While Nigeria, like many countries, has faced security challenges, including acts of terrorism perpetrated by criminals, couching the situation as a deliberate, systematic attack on Christians is inaccurate and harmful. It oversimplifies a complex, multifaceted security environment and plays into the hands terrorists and criminals who seek to divide Nigerians along religious or ethnic lines.”
Although the statement by the Minister of Information has addressed the situation to a large extent, Daily Trust believes that at the crux of the matter is the failure to curb the activities of the terrorists which has been going on now for over two decades. Over the years since the advent of terrorism in the country, successive governments have not treated the matter with the decisiveness required.
The lack of firm concerted approach to neutralise the terrorists by government have enabled them to seek ways of widening the scope of their murderous activities including arms procurement and logistical deployment. Thus, the terrorist groups have found it very rewarding to attack soft targets of opportunity including places of worship, vulnerable communities and critical infrastructure.
The terrorists have also morphed into commercial ventures where territories are captured and inhabitants are compelled to provide ransom and protection levy in cash which in turn are used to purchase arms, vehicles for operations.
We agree with government that it is simplistic to claim that the terrorist activities are targeted mainly at Christians because statistics have shown that the terrorists do not discriminate against any particular faith in their criminal operations. Indeed, the United States Special Envoy for Arab and African Affairs, Massad Boulos, on a visit to President Bola Tinubu in Italy, not only confirmed this, but pointedly stated that terrorists have killed more Muslims in Nigeria. The envoy stated that “Those who know the terrain well know that terrorism has no colour, no religion and no tribe.”
Against this background, the attempts to label the tragic consequences of terrorist activities as genocidal killings against Christians is to large extent, an unfortunate manipulation of the issue for purely partisan and sentimental motives by elites.
We at the Daily Trust note that this is the time for the government to be more pro-active both in its conduct of the war against the terrorists and in its engagement with local stakeholders and the international community on this issue. Until the issue assumed this dimension, the government had only taken cursory steps in engaging community and religious leaders in the affected areas in a concerted way to address the issue. Similarly, over the years, governments had not taken the necessary steps to explain to the international community the true nature of the issue in order to clear any doubts.
Indeed, this is the time that Nigeria is ruing the absence of full diplomatic representation at our foreign missions. If Nigeria had been represented at full diplomatic level in the US and other nations and global institutions, it would have been a routine matter to monitor and engage the relevant personalities and institutions and explain to them the reality of Nigeria’s war on terrorism.
As it is now, facing possible action on what is clearly a misconception of the issues at stake on the terrorist activities, Nigeria has no choice but to crank up pro-active engagements both locally and internationally in order put the records straight on the unfounded allegations of Christian genocide in the country.
