UN envoy says Nigeria is suffering because of radical Islam, political corruption

Yaoundé: The UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Nazila Ghanea, has offered a sobering assessment of freedom of religion in Nigeria, saying that the fundamental human right to freedom of religion or belief is being systematically suffocated by the weaponization of religion.

“This official country visit focused on exploring how freedom of thought, conscience and religion (freedom of religion or belief) interacts with human rights realities on the ground throughout this vast land,” Ghanea said in her preliminary observation.

She said during meetings with various stakeholders, including federal and state authorities in Abuja, Plateau, and Kano, discussions regarding freedom of religion or belief were immediately and overwhelmingly overshadowed by acute concerns regarding widespread violence.

Nigeria has been scarred by widespread violence for decades, with terrorist organizations such as the violent Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which seeks to create a caliphate across the Sahel. Figures from the Catholic-inspired NGO, International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, suggest that there could be as many as 22 such terrorist organizations in Nigeria.

According to the UN Rapporteur, rural communities in certain regions are enduring a devastating cycle of mass violence, killings, and arson, overwhelmingly committed with absolute impunity. Driven from their homes by these attacks, survivors are frequently forced into displacement camps where they are stripped of their livelihoods and agricultural futures.

Although these specific terrorized communities are predominantly Christian, Ghanea emphasizes that the grievous loss of life and dignity is a universal tragedy that transcends all religious, ethnic, and ideological lines.

Compounding this humanitarian crisis is the relentless targeting of education, evidenced by repeated abductions of school children that authorities rarely address or prevent.

“The involvement of the authorities sometimes leads to the release of a small number of the school children often after a long and painful wait,” she stated.

Together, these systemic failures represent a profound and wide-ranging assault on fundamental human and child rights.

While actual figures are hard to come by because many of the killings go unreported, Intersociety data suggests that over a 14-year period ending in 2023, at least 52,250 Christians had died in the ongoing violence. In an updated report this year, the group said that between July 2009 and March 2026, 190,150 Nigerians were killed by bandits, Boko Haram insurgents, and suspected armed herdsmen. This total includes roughly 128,750 Christians and 61,400 moderate Muslims.

The UN Rapporteur cited testimonies from the victims of Nigeria’s worsening violence, each testimony pointing to unspeakable levels of suffering.

“One victim spoke to being displaced six times over the last 10 years, each time needing to start from scratch and moving from field to field, field to camp and back again, only to face the murder of family and close neighbors before being forced to relocate to an even more austere reality. Another spoke to three members of the nuclear family having been singled out for murder,” she recounted.

Ghanea detailed horrific realities at the village level, where innocent people are repeatedly killed or displaced.

“What remains uncontested is that, at the village and hamlet levels in particular concentrations of the country, scores of innocent people experience killings, mass violence and the total decimation of their livelihoods, time and again, witnessing little or no justice. Horrific instances have included mass arson against whole communities with survivors forced to move to camps for the internally displaced with no return in sight, unable to farm, earn a livelihood, and provide for their families.

So horrific is the violence that, in some instances, villagers have to sign ‘grim peace deals’ with their attackers.

“In other instances, rural communities are forced to strike ‘peace deals’ with the bandits–reportedly assigning fields to them, granting them the proceeds from the produce of other fields, and ‘taking any woman that they want’ from the hamlet,” the UN envoy said.

In her preliminary report on Friday, Ghanea said that discussions of freedom of religion or belief in Nigeria “elicits very acute concerns about insecurity, violence and conflict which has spread throughout the country and has generated huge alarm, albeit to different intensities and for different reasons.”

“These include terrorist actions, gang violence and banditry incursions, land grabbing to mass displacement, armed conflict and cattle rustling, hostage taking to arson attacks, destruction of holy places and schools, large scale kidnappings in remote areas and civil unrest around protests and strikes, decimation of irrigated farmlands and whole villages and livelihoods, through endless cycles of threats, fear and death in expanding areas of the country.”

She revealed that rather than serving as a protected personal liberty, religion in Nigeria has now been transformed into a highly susceptible “organizing principle” exploited by politicians to buy influence from pulpits and by armed groups to justify horrific violence, mass displacement, and mob justice.

Ghanea explained that the abuse of religion is structurally entrenched at every level of society; from administrative forms that compel citizens to declare their faith, to defiant state-level blasphemy and Sharia criminal provisions that local authorities openly defend by insisting on “morality ahead of legality.”

She blamed the worsening violence and the destruction of livelihoods on the lack of government accountability.

“Impunity and lack of accountability have reportedly entrenched these cycles of fear and violence and encouraged its spread,” she said, pointing out that what once was contained to specific regions has now spread across much of the country, largely outside urban areas.

The UN envoy said trying to explain the Nigerian situation simply as a conflict between the “predominantly Muslim north and Christian south” misses the whole point, and that it restricts individual freedoms and makes the nation highly susceptible to religion being weaponized.

“This moves ‘religion’ far from the human right to freedom of religion or belief… It is also reported that application for a Nigerian passport and the National Identification Number (NIN) used to have a religion field, but this has been removed in compliance with international standards,” she noted, implying other forms should follow suit.

Many interlocutors, she said, were resigned to the fact that politicians at all levels will seek to “buy influence” from religious pulpits, effectively playing religion for “power, politics and wealth.”

The Special Rapporteur also flagged deep legal tensions between Nigeria’s federal constitution and state-level laws, particularly regarding criminal punishments and blasphemy introduced in northern states in the early 2000s. She pointed to defiance in Kano State following a landmark April 2025 ECOWAS court ruling against blasphemy laws, with some state authorities arguing the decisions are not binding and defending the laws as “our culture” and “morality ahead of legality.”

Ghanea strongly pushed back against this fragmentation of rights, echoing legal experts who view such state laws as a direct violation of the constitutional provision that the government shall not adopt any religion as a state religion.

“One interlocutor insisted that ‘we must elevate the constitution’,” Ghanea reported.

Despite the grim findings, Ghanea praised the “vibrancy and straightforwardness of Nigeria’s civil society actors,” noting that the country possesses the expertise, inspirational youth, and community-led peacebuilding initiatives needed to secure equal rights for all. Still, “there is a long way to go until that is realized,” she concluded.

Her full report and recommendations will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in March 2027.