Nigerian church leaders welcome conclusions confirming Christian genocide

Church leaders in Nigeria say they are gladdened at the conclusion reached by a U.S. fact-finder that there is a systematic plan to erase Christianity in the African country.

Mike Arnold, on October 14th, presented his findings on a decade-long campaign of violence targeting Christians in Nigeria. The former mayor of Blanco City, Texas, said he had been gathering the information since 2019.

Reading from a prepared statement titled “Statement on Widespread Violence and Displacement in Nigeria,” Arnold said that “villages are systematically razed, churches leveled, and tens of thousands are dead.”

He pushed back on the claim that puts down the violence to a fight between farmers and grazers over resources.

“This is systematic terror and not grazing conflicts,” he said, “…the term farmer herder clashes, in many instances today, are cynical doublespeak. Weaponizing historical land disputes to mask jihadist conquest. For centuries, herders and farmers co-existed with rare, very rarely lethal disputes.”

Citing Article II of the UN Genocide Convention, Arnold asserted that the situation in Nigeria meets the legal threshold for genocide.

 “The campaign of violence and displacement in northern and middle belt Nigeria does indeed constitute a calculated current and long-running genocide against Christian communities and other religious minorities without any reasonable doubt. To continue to deny this is to be complicit with these atrocities,” he asserted.

He said that denying the existence of genocide against Christians bolsters the resolve of the perpetrators to do even worse.

“To continue to deny this is to be complicit with these atrocities, I say this not in anger, but in truth and grief.”

“I believe in Christian-Muslim harmony. I believe good people of every tribe and faith and party must stand against this evil, but first we must name it,” he stated.

It is a report that likely was not pleasing to the Nigerian authorities who invited him.

Reno Omokri, a former presidential spokesperson, tried to dismiss Arnold’s report.

 “The claim is not true. So, if you ask me if there is genocide in Nigeria, of course there’s not. However, if you believe that Nigerian state officials are facilitating terror, mention them, name them. Help us name them,” Omokri said.

Report vindicates claims of genocide

Church leaders and various entities in Nigeria have welcomed Arnold’s conclusions as a vindication of what they have decried for so long.

“There is special joy in our hearts,” said Emeka Umeagbalasi, Director of the Catholic-inspired NGO, and International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Intersociety.

 He insists that the Nigerian government that invited the U.S. fact-finder did so with the intent of covering up the atrocities being committed against Christians. But Arnold and his team had a different plan.

“What the Nigerian government expected those people to say never came alive. The team said the opposite of what the government wanted,” he told CWR.

He said when Arnold presented his findings at the press conference, “the whole hall went into graveyard silence,” as officials were disappointed at the truth being documented.

Umeagbalasi told CWR that the report substantiated earlier findings by Intersociety on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.

In its latest updated report, the NGO presents what Umeagbalasi calls “deeply disturbing statistics” showing the scale of violence in Nigeria. The findings, spanning from 2010 to October 10, 2025, reveal a campaign of devastation that has claimed 185,000 lives—including 125,000 Christians and 60,000 nonviolent Muslims.

The physical landscape of faith has also been ravaged, with 19,100 churches burned to the ground and 1,100 entire Christian communities seized and occupied by jihadist forces allegedly backed or protected by the government. The violence, Umeagbalasi said, has fueled a humanitarian crisis, forcing an estimated 15 million people, mainly Christians, from their homes.

The report further highlights a deliberate targeting of spiritual leaders, with 600 clerics abducted and dozens killed or vanished.

Umeagbalasi warned that the terror is far from over, with 40 million Northern Christians threatened and millions of Christians in the South facing “genocidal threats.” He said the danger is amplified by a security force that has become “ethno-religiously radicalized and secularly imbalanced.”

He said if the trend is not halted, “Christianity could be wiped out from Nigeria in the next 50 years.”

He added that the government has traditionally sought to obfuscate the issue, and instead of presenting “credible, counter-statistical data to refute the allegations, they chose to manipulate the narrative. This strategy is destined to fail due to its lack of a factual foundation, and as a result, the government’s tactics have devolved into blackmail, name-calling, and persistent denials.”

Stan Chu Ilo, a Research Professor of African Studies at DePaul University, offers a nuanced perspective on the current situation in Nigeria.

Describing the Nigerian political scene as ‘convoluted,’ he says Christians are also complicit in their own undoing, citing the fact that some key positions in government are actually held by Christians.

“This government at the federal level is made up of both Christians and Muslims, even though for the first time in Nigeria’s political democratic experiment, we have a president who is Muslim and a vice president who is Muslim,” he told CWR.

“We might simplify the problem in Nigeria today as Christians versus Muslims or genocide against Christians. I don’t like to frame that argument that way. Are Christians being killed, targeted? Yes. Is the Nigerian government complicit in this? Yes. But which government, which law enforcement officers or arm of the government do you hold responsible? So, it’s a very complex reality.“

He said the architecture of violence in Nigeria is tied to the “corrupt, insensitive, unaccountable and destructive government that we have.”

“Christians are also part of this government. Christians are ministers; they are legislators. So, the blame, therefore, I think, is to be laid squarely at the doorstep of Nigeria’s political class. I think the political and religious elites in Nigeria are largely to blame for the collapse of the nation. “

“Nigeria is a failed state. What we have today is not a government. What we have are individuals who have kind of pocketed the resources of this country and mortgaged our future as a people.  And in this merciless, senseless, and conscienceless elite competition, they don’t care about the lives of the people. And Christians, sadly, are getting the rough edges of the stick.”

Mike Arnold’s report, however, confirms previous reports by Intersociety linking Christian persecution to a well-planned attempt to turn Nigeria into a caliphate. The government’s involvement came to the fore with the ascent of Muhamadou Buhari, the former president, to the presidency (for a second time) in 2015.

According to Umeagbalasi, Buhari positioned his fellow Fulanis in key positions in the government and the military, and ever since, the killing of Christians has intensified, with the government always looking the other way.

What Nigeria must do to stem the killings

Amid mounting evidence of Christian persecution in Nigeria, the human rights group Intersociety has issued a 21-point demand for the government to end what it terms a “religicide.”

The demands center on restoring Nigeria’s secular foundations by enforcing the 1999 Constitution, which guarantees religious freedom and prohibits a state religion. The group calls for an end to all “semblances of ‘State Jihadism’” and a return to governance based on secular principles.

A major focus of the proposals is the radical overhaul of the nation’s security forces. Intersociety demands an end to what it describes as “crude, brutish, and ethno-religious soldiering,” citing the case of Imo State, where all key security posts are held by senior Northern Muslim officers despite the state having a 95% Christian population. The group is also demanding that security agencies account for an estimated 5,000 Easterners, mostly Igbo, who it claims were secretly abducted and imprisoned in the North.

Furthermore, the proposals call for decisive action against jihadist groups by disarming both domestic and foreign elements and holding their leaders accountable. On a political level, Intersociety is demanding an end to the “Muslim-Muslim Presidency,” a new, credible national census, and a national conference to address the country’s deep-seated ethnic and religious divisions.

“Nigeria must return to secularism,” Umeagbalasi told CWR. “Nigeria must be governed pluralistically, multiculturally, and multireligiously. Muslims must be allowed to practise Islam non-violently and peacefully.  Christians must be allowed to practise Christianity non-violently and peacefully. Likewise, members of the traditional religion, Jewish religion, and so on and so forth,” he explained.

Father Ilo added his voice to proposals for a solution, arguing that for Nigerian Christians to combat persecution, they must forge a unified front and develop what he calls a “protest, resistant, interruptive or disruptive ecclesiology that is prophetic, courageous and bold.”

He criticized many preachers for prioritizing “monetary gifts “obtained mostly from the powerful.

He said this creates a “client-patron relationship” with the government. “I think our own Nigerian church leaders must begin to speak more, rather than exploit the situation to their own selfish advantage,” he told CWR.

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