Nigeria “must do more to protect Christians,” a senior U.S. State Division legitimate demanded on Jan. 22, 2026, all the way through a high-level safety assembly within the African country’s capital, Abuja.
The remark adopted an assault simply days previous through which greater than 160 worshipers had been abducted from 3 church buildings in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state.
The protection assembly got here a month after the USA, in cooperation with the Nigerian executive, introduced an airstrike from a U.S. Army send within the Gulf of Guinea at the northwest Sokoto state. All over the Christmas Day incident, 16 Tomahawk missiles costing round US$32 million hit a number of places the U.S. claimed had been being utilized by extremist teams.
There have been no verifiable casualties, despite the fact that the strike did ship a sign that the U.S. management is prepared to take army motion when it’s deemed important. President Donald Trump heralded the assault a “Christmas present” to Christians and later warned that there can be extra moves if the killings of Christians persisted.
As a student of African politics, I do know that calling the insurgency in Nigeria a persecution of Christians – because the U.S. management has again and again executed – is simplistic and ill-informed. Sure, Christians had been killed and abducted as a part of the extended terrorism marketing campaign by way of Boko Haram and different extremist teams. However so too produce other teams within the nation, together with Muslims. Additionally, the spiritual identification of the sufferers mask different motives of the militant teams concerned.
I lately performed interviews in Maiduguri, Borno State – the epicenter of Boko Haram actions in northeast Nigeria – as a part of analysis into interfaith efforts to counter threats from Islamic extremists. For plenty of of the ones interviewed, the insurgency and violence have steadily served to unite Nigerians with other spiritual identities in opposition to a not unusual enemy: the teams making their existence a distress. The risk of Trump’s narrative of this being a struggle on Christians is that it would undermine such efforts to construct cross-community accept as true with.
A fancy warfare
Since 2009 there were 54,000 deaths associated with the violence in Nigeria and the encompassing Lake Chad area, consistent with impartial violence track ACLED.
The Christmas airstrike by way of the U.S. was once in northwest Nigeria, focused on a small crew of Lakurawa militants. However 85% of all incidents associated with Islamic opponents in 2025 had been in northeast Nigeria, consistent with ACLED.
Northern Nigeria is essentially populated by way of Muslims, by contrast to the entire of the rustic, whose 240 million individuals are break up more or less 56%-43% between Muslims and Christians.
A lot of the ones killed and kidnapped within the insurgency within the north had been Christian. However the unique focal point on Christians by way of the U.S. management overlooks the advanced realities at the back of the violence in Nigeria, which comprises no longer simply extremist teams but in addition farmer-herder tensions, land and water disputes exacerbated by way of local weather alternate, ethnic rivalries, poverty and arranged prison gangs known as “bandits.”
Boko Haram, which regards the Nigerian state as its major goal, has killed each Christians and Muslims, as has the Ansaru, an al-Qaida associate. The Islamic State – West Africa Province, some other primary insurgency crew, goals state forces and Christians.
Whilst the newest high-profile assaults had been on church buildings, Boko Haram additionally goals markets, mosques and houses. They’re opportunistic assaults that don’t discriminate between Muslims and Christians.
To make certain, the Nigerian executive’s reaction to the insurgency has been insufficient. However once more, the explanations are advanced and the results of a confluence of things, together with corruption within the safety sector, negligence and the trouble of focused on teams that make use of guerrilla techniques out of doors of presidency keep an eye on, which lead them to particularly elusive. Political elements can be at play, since components throughout the Nigerian executive could also be complicit with northern politicians backing one of the vital land-grabbing and kidnapping bandits.
Even with those obstacles, some development has been made. In step with the Africa Middle for Strategic Research, Boko Haram assaults have declined by way of 50% since 2014-2016, after they had been maximum lively, despite the fact that charges had been expanding once more since 2023.
Interfaith efforts
The Nigerian executive itself has welcomed the aid of the U.S. focused on insurgents, however with the proviso that Nigeria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity be revered.
The worry is that army motion at the a part of the U.S. beneath the guise of shielding Christians in Nigeria may make issues worse. It dangers exacerbating tensions throughout the nation and giving credence to these in Nigeria and in a foreign country who focal point most effective at the killing of Christians for their very own slender functions.
On the similar time, it would undermine the efforts of civil society organizations and ladies’s associations, specifically, that experience labored laborious to construct interfaith accept as true with between Muslims and Christians to take on the insurgency danger.
A few of these organizations, such because the Ladies of Religion Peacebuilding Community, had been at the leading edge of the struggle in opposition to militant teams. An interfaith motion based in 2011, it now contains over 10,000 Christian and Muslim ladies. It carries out vocational coaching and promotes interfaith discussion and methods to scale back warfare.
Citizens acquire close to the scene of the explosion at a mosque within the Gamboru marketplace in Maiduguri on Dec. 25, 2025.
Audu Marte/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
The Federation of Muslim Ladies’s Associations in Nigeria, or FOMWAN, is some other group this is actively engaged in interfaith tasks national. In a January 2024 interview, a FOMWAN member based totally in Maiduguri advised me that the Boko Haram disaster has united ladies throughout spiritual divides greater than ever ahead of.
Maryam, whose title I’ve modified along side different interviewees to give protection to their identification, defined: “FOMWAN has been in existence for many years before the insurgency. And in our activities we had been teaching our Muslim women religious tolerance in Borno. But the insurgency has made us put more efforts into making sure there is religious tolerance among Muslims and Christians.”
A Christian evangelist preacher, Mary, advised me that running in combination had considerably lowered the mutual worry and distrust between Muslims and Christians. Prior to the upward push of Boko Haram, interfaith collaboration between the 2 teams was once low. However nowadays, she famous, it’s a long way upper.
“We came to understand that this set of people doing this killing are neither Christian nor Muslim. They’re working for selfish interests, not for religious interests. We now strategize and come together to work as one. The key issue to (the conflict) is poverty. The only solution is for us is to speak with one voice. That’s the only way for us to survive.”
‘Each other’s keeper’
The U.S. management would, I imagine, do smartly to hear the voices of those Christian and Muslim peacebuilders in northern Nigeria who reside with the day-to-day danger of violence.
Their lived enjoy has advised an solution to Nigeria’s insurgency in accordance with shared goal that cuts throughout spiritual divides.
Within the phrases of activist Mama Professional, when requested why she was once so prepared to construct interfaith bridges in Northern Nigeria: “We are always each other’s keeper.”
