Nigeria Memo to UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Freedom

Mourning the death of a family member after the attack in Jos on Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026 Credit: Samson Omale/Associated Press

Memorandum on Nigeria to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion

To: Ms. Nazila Ghanea, U.N. Special Rapporteur

From: Genocide Watch, The Alliance Against Genocide

Re: Input for the Special Rapporteur’s country visit to Nigeria

Date: April 30, 2026

Jihadist massacres of Christians and moderate Muslims in Nigeria constitute Genocide.

Muslim jihadist attacks on churches, religiously sponsored schools, and Christian villages in Nigeria directly threaten freedom of religion or belief. Two jihadist groups, Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) have murdered over  30,000 Christians and moderate Muslims since 2009. Fulani jihadist militias have murdered another 30,000 Christian civilians, burned their villages, and declared the villages to be part of a “Caliphate.”

There is strong evidence that Fulani, Hausa, and other Muslim Generals in the Nigerian Army are intentionally preventing their troops from intervening to stop massacres of Christian villages until the killing is finished. Jihadist groups are buying their guns, armed pick-up trucks, fuel, and supplies with money from Fulani cattle owners, who want to increase the grazing areas for their large cattle herds. Many herds are owned by Generals in the Nigerian Army. Nigerian President Buhari, a Fulani himself, was President of the Fulani Cattlemen’s Association.

Four terrorist groups are perpetrating the massacres: Fulani jihadist militias, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), Boko Haram, and Lakurawa. They escalated their massacres in 2025 and 2026. Since 2001, these Muslim terrorist groups have murdered over 60,000 people.

Nigeria is ranked fourth globally for the impact of terrorism according to the 2026 Global Terrorism Index.

Kidnapping for ransom has become a way these terrorist groups finance their operations. In 2024, at least 580 civilians, including women and girls, were abducted and held for ransom. The Nigerian government calls the perpetrators “bandits.” This is a tactic the government uses to avoid identifying the ethnic and religious affiliation of Fulani and Boko Haram kidnappers. Several hostage camps are within twenty kilometers of Nigerian military bases. Yet the Nigerian military never raids the camps to free the victims.

Fulani jihadist militias have concentrated their attacks in the Middle Belt states of Benue, Plateau, Kaduna, and Kogi. According to the speaker of Nigeria’s house of representatives, jihadist attacks have caused the deaths of more than 60,000 people and displaced more than 2.2 million people. As of mid-2025, over 500,000 people had been displaced into IDP camps in Benue state alone. The camps lack adequate access to food, water, and healthcare.

In June 2025, Fulani militants attacked the predominantly Catholic village of Yelwata. They destroyed homes and burned people alive, killing 100 to over 200 villagers. The militants even murdered infants, toddlers, and the elderly. In July 2025, Fulani militants attacked Bindi, a Christian farming village in Plateau State. The assailants killed at least 27 civilians, including women and children. Soldiers stationed nearby from Operation Safe Haven failed to respond to urgent calls for help.

Fulani jihadist militants attacked residents of Kwakwahu, Madagali County, Adamawa State in October 2025. Despite desperate pleas for help to nearby security forces, the assault lasted for hours without any intervention from security forces. Survivors paid a large ransom for release of remaining hostages.

Victims of armed attacks are typically unarmed farmers and villagers targeted by heavily armed attackers. Survivors have no access to protection or justice. Amnesty International reports that 10,217 people have been killed by terrorists in the past two years. The persecution of Christians in Nigeria has been condemned by U.S. President Donald Trump. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu denies the charges.

Genocide Watch interviews with two Nigerian reporters on jihadist attacks

In interviews with two reporters for TruthNigeria—Masara Kim and Mike Odeh James—the West Africa Team at Genocide Watch learned of genocidal attacks on Christian villages as well as the inaction and complicity of the Nigerian Army. Masara Kim and Mike James spoke to numerous eyewitnesses of the targeted attacks in Nigeria.

The UN Special Rapporteur should take note of what the eyewitnesses told them. Christian villages often face attacks by over 100 Fulani militiamen armed with assault weapons. They arrive in pickup trucks with 50 caliber machine guns and on motorcycles. Usually, the only weapons the villagers have are ancient shotguns, machetes, and slingshots. Even these arms are often confiscated by the Nigerian Army for alleged violation of weapons laws.

Mr. Kim spoke to us of a pastor whose gun was confiscated by the Army. A short time later, the pastor and his family were murdered in an attack on their village. Some villages have formed civilian self-defense groups. However, members of such forces are often arrested by the same Nigerian security forces that failed to protect them. Christian villagers are neither protected nor permitted to protect themselves.

This genocide by attrition is not sporadic. It is systematic and expanding. Since 2001, jihadists have invaded and taken over more than 1,000 Christian villages: over 200 in Plateau State, 300 in Kaduna State, over 200 in Benue State, more than 300 in Nasarawa State, and more than 500 in Niger State. Fulani jihadists have killed and expelled villagers and established Muslim theocratic governments and taxation systems. Captured villages are then used as staging grounds for attacks on neighboring villages.  

Fulani jihadists target crops as well. They come at night armed with machetes, and level acres of crops in a single night. This is a deliberate measure to starve the villages the jihadists then invade and take over.

Destruction of their crops leave villagers with no food and no money to buy food. Some villagers have resorted to artisanal mining. Men, women, and children climb into wells and dig through the sand at the bottom looking for minerals to sell. The wells often collapse, burying whoever may be inside.

Journalists like Masara Kim and Mike James face great danger because of their reporting. In 2020, Mr. Kim was interrogated by the Nigerian Secret Service for hours following his publishing a report that exposed plans by Fulani jihadists to attack Christian villages in the coming days. His report allowed the villages to prepare for the jihadist attacks, and they were able to minimize casualties.

According to Mr. Kim, the Nigerian Secret Service were upset with him for exposing the vulnerability of those villages and charging the Nigerian government and military with failure to protect the population. Other Nigerian publications reported on similar detentions by the Secret Service.

Mr. Kim has received death threats from Nigerian government officials with warnings to stay away from the scenes of village massacres.

Mr. Kim has been the target of jihadist machine guns on several occasions. He has been in car chases in which he narrowly escaped with his life. He relocated from his home village to a poorer village for his own safety and the safety of his family. He often can’t return to his family at night. He has made this sacrifice to report on the massacres of his people.

The Nigerian Government’s Twelve Tactics of Denial

Twelve tactics are used by the Nigerian government to diminish and deny the existence of the genocide of Christians in Nigeria.

1.     Use euphemisms.

Baldly deny the charges of genocide outright. Nigerian governors and President Tinubu explain away the attacks as “herder-farmer conflicts,” as though they are two-sided battles. Such euphemisms are used to deny the systematic, organized, one-sided nature of the attacks.

2.     Blame Climate Change.

 The most pervasive and dangerous denial tactic, according to Masara Kim, is using Climate Change to obfuscate the genocidal intent of the Fulani jihadists. By treating their attacks as unintentional results of natural forces, this tactic denies the genocidal intent of the jihadist attackers. The US State Department has been rendered inert by this tactic. If the attacks result from natural forces, nothing can be done about them. International action to stop the conflict would be ineffective.

Nigeria, like many countries in Africa, is certainly experiencing the effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and negative effects on farming. This is driving human migration in Nigeria south, in the same direction that Fulani jihadists are taking over farmland for cattle grazing.

This denial tactic is effective because deniers can point to climate change as the cause of human movement in Nigeria and by extension as the underlying reason for the massacres. The truth is that climate change and the Nigerian genocide are interconnected. But that fact does not mean that the Nigerian government is powerless to prevent and stop the killing.

Does climate change make the jihadists burn down churches if they only want to take over grazing land? In no other country are groups of herders murdering entire villages en masse. Why would climate change have that effect in Nigeria alone? Real environmental issues are being used as a mask to cover up a genocide of Christians in Nigeria.

3.     Question and minimize the statistics.

Nigeria’s Foreign Minister says that no more Christians than Muslims have been killed by terrorists. That is a lie.

Over 60,000 Christians have been murdered by Boko Haram and Fulani Jihadists since 2009. The highest estimate of moderate Muslims killed by Boko Haram is 20,000. Both Boko Haram and Fulani jihadists target Christian villages and schools, but the Fulani jihadists leave Muslim villages and schools untouched.

4.     Attack the motivations of the truth-tellers.

Dismiss U.S. charges as products of election-year politics in America, or of anti-Islamic Christians. American imperialists have demonstrated their hatred of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine. This “moral disqualification” argument is a red herring used by the Nigerian Ambassadors at both the U.N. Human Rights Council and the U.N. Security Council. It is aimed to appeal to fellow Islamic countries.

5. Emphasize the strangeness of the victims.

Classify Nigerian Christians as infidels, tribalists, or as corrupted by colonialism. Islam is the true religion. Christians are infidels. They are unlike the Muslim generals who control northern Nigeria and who own vast cattle herds. Americans or Europeans use racist de-humanization of Black Africans as naturally uncivilized and violent, “They’re Africans. They just do these sorts of things to each other.”

6. Rationalize the deaths as the result of Nigerian history.

Conflict between Fulanis and other ethnic groups in Nigeria dates back over two centuries, to the Sokoto caliphate of Osman dan Fodio in the early nineteenth century. That Fulani jihad forcibly converted the Hausa and other northern Nigerians to Islam. It was only stopped by British colonialism and Christian missionaries.

Boko Haram and Fulani expansion are just reactions to the continuing influence of colonialism.

The targeting of Christians is a natural response to imperialism. Forced displacement of Christian villages is the inevitable reaction to the history of Christian domination of Muslims in northern Nigeria. The Nigerian Ambassador to the U.N. claimed that the deaths were just the result of age-old tribal conflicts between cattle herders (Fulani) and farmers (Christian African). In fact, there were no genocidal massacres in northern Nigeria until the Nigerian government came under the control of Muslim presidents and a Muslim led army.

7. Blame “out of control” forces for committing the killings,

Claim that the killings are by “bandits” or undefined “terrorists”. Claim that their motivation is to profit from ransoms paid by families of kidnapped victims. Deny that there is any religious aspect to the genocide of Christians. This shifting of blame denies responsibility for the complicity of the Nigerian government.

The success of this tactic is demonstrated by the absence of any U.N. Security Council Resolutions condemning this genocide. The Nigerian government, UN, and academic “experts” blame the killings on bandits and terrorists and demand that the Nigerian government disarm the terrorists and bring their leaders to justice. In fact, Fulani jihadists obtain their weapons from corrupt Nigerian generals. Not one major Fulani or Boko Haram leader has been arrested or tried.

8. Avoid antagonizing the killers, who might walk out of “the peace process.”

This real politik argument is used to frighten diplomats who fear “upsetting the peace process” in Nigeria. In 2026 the argument has become: “don’t upset the fragile new order under President Tinubu, with whom the US wants to get along.

Meanwhile the displacement of Christians from Central and Northern Nigeria proceeds. Genocidal massacres, kidnapping from schools, and rapes continue weekly. This pacifist argument, which diplomats repeatedly and naively espouse, ignores the fact that genocidists are serial killers. Policies toward them based on fear lead only to appeasement and further genocide.

9. Justify denial in favor of current economic interests. 

This is the key reason why oil companies oppose an arms embargo on the Nigerian government. Nigeria is a source of oil for American and European companies. (Shell Oil, Chevron/Texaco, British Petroleum, Exxon/Mobil, Agip and Total) are the primary developers of southeastern Nigeria’s oilfields. The U.S. and UK sell millions of dollars of arms to Nigeria. The U.K. has threatened to veto U.N. sanctions.

10. Claim that what is going on doesn’t fit the definition of genocide.

“Definitionalist” denial is most common among lawyers and policy makers who want to avoid intervention beyond provision of humanitarian aid. It results in “analysis paralysis.” The European Union, the Secretary General of the United Nations and even Amnesty International still avoid calling the crimes in Nigeria by their proper name: Genocide. It is a pity. There are three reasons for such reluctance:

A. Among journalists, the public, diplomats, and lawyers who haven’t read the Genocide Convention, there is a common misconception that a finding of genocide would legally require action to suppress it.

Unfortunately, the Genocide Convention carries no such legal compulsion to act. It legally requires only that states-parties pass national laws against genocide and then prosecute or extradite those who commit the crime. Article VIII of the Convention says they also “may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide.” But they aren’t legally required to do so.

B. Another misconception is the “all or none” concept of genocide. The all-or-none school considers killings to be genocide only if their intent is to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group “in whole.” Their model is the Holocaust. They ignore the “in part” in the definition in the Genocide Convention, which they often haven’t read.

C. Since the 1990’s, a new obstacle to calling genocide by its proper name has been the distinction between genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” a term originally invented as a euphemism for genocide in the Balkans.

Genocide and “ethnic cleansing” are sometimes portrayed as mutually exclusive crimes, but they are not. The fallacy of the distinction is evident in Nigeria, where the intent of the Fulani Jihadist militias is to drive Christian farmers off of their ancestral lands (ethnic cleansing,) using terror caused by systematic acts of genocide, including mass murder, mass rape, and mass starvation. Nigerian government run IDP camps are like concentration camps run by Nigerian army guards, where murder and rape are rampant. 

Both ethnic cleansing and genocide are underway in Nigeria.

D. Claim that the “intent” of the perpetrator is merely “ethnic cleansing” not “genocide,” which requires the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Such arguments confuse motive with intent. Even if the motive of a perpetrator is to drive a group off its land (“ethnic cleansing”), killing members of the group and other acts enumerated in the Genocide Convention can still have the specific intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part. That’s genocide.

This tactic of denial was used by the International Court of Justice to deny that Serbia violated the Genocide Convention in its wrongly decided Bosnia v Serbia and Croatia v Serbia cases. The ICJ held that if there is any other intent such as “ethnic cleansing,” the specific intent of its acts cannot be conclusively proven to be genocide. Genocide must be the “Only Intent” of a state for the ICJ to conclude it violated the Genocide Convention.

This reasoning treats genocide and forced displacement as mutually exclusive crimes. In fact, both crimes are usually committed together. This tactic is like saying that if a robber shoots and kills his victim, he cannot be convicted of murder because he also had the intent to rob the victim.

This doctrine would deny nearly every genocide, because the acts of genocide always have multiple intents including displacement, confiscation of assets, torture, persecution, and destruction of a group. The “Only Intent” doctrine would deny every genocide, including the Holocaust.

11. Blame the victims.

Claim that the Nigerian government is simply fighting an insurrection by a terrorist movement comprised of “bandits” who themselves commit the crimes. By portraying the situation as a two sided civil war, killing is seen as self-defense by one group against another group, rather than genocide. The Nigerian government appeals to this common misunderstanding that civil war and genocide are mutually exclusive. This mistake was made by the US Ambassador to Rwanda in 1994, who thought Rwanda was in a civil war, instead of a genocide.

In fact, civil war is very often a predictor and correlate of genocide. Genocide occurs especially during civil and international wars because war is legalized killing, when even women and children of an adversary group are portrayed as enemies of the state.

12. Peace and reconciliation are more important than blaming people for genocide.

This is the justification for amnesties for mass murderers as part of peace agreements, and for opposition to post-conflict tribunals. But peace and reconciliation are not alternatives to justice. Lasting peace requires justice. Without prosecution of those who commit genocide, an expectation of impunity is created.

As Fein and Harff have shown, one of the best predictors of future genocide is previous genocide that has gone unpunished. Without trials, denial becomes permanent.

Conclusion

A brutal civil war by jihadist terrorists against Christians and moderate Muslims is underway in Nigeria. The genocide against Christians is gradual. It is what genocide scholar Helen Fein called “genocide by attrition.”

A settlement negotiated in Abuja might save lives. But the talks could take years. Meanwhile there will be peace in Nigeria only with a restructured Nigerian military, possibly augmented by an African Union force, supported logistically and financially by the West.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Religious Freedom should not censor her findings in deference to pressure from the Nigerian government. Diplomatic politeness must not become an excuse for denial or sanitizing of the facts of religious persecution and genocide in Nigeria.

Human Rights groups around the world will expect a forthright report that reveals the truth about threats to religious freedom and the jihadist terrorists that are committing genocide in Nigeria.

This memorandum may be freely republished in its entirety without alteration with credit to Genocide Watch.