Nigerian Bishop Warns: ‘Total Elimination of Christians Is Underway’

Congressional Testimonies and 4,216 Deaths Refute Abuja’s Denial of Targeted Persecution

By Mary Kiara

BENUE, Nigeria – Bishop Wilfred Anagbe has told the U.S. Congress four times that Christians face genocide in Nigeria. New data shows one killed every 86 minutes.

For Reverend Anagbe, Catholic Bishop of Makurdi, the ongoing bloodshed across his diocese reinforces a persistent pattern of displacement aimed at erasing indigenous Christian farming communities.

“The total elimination of the Christian population is underway,” Bishop Anagbe told TruthNigeria. 

“The attackers follow a recurring pattern: killing civilians, destroying churches, burning farmland, and driving entire communities from their villages before occupying the abandoned land. This is a calculated strategy of Islamization.”

Anagbe has carried that warning beyond Nigeria, appearing before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee in July 2023, February 2024, March 2025, and again in November 2025. 

His argument has remained consistent: The violence is not simply a series of isolated attacks but a pattern that has driven Christian families from communities where they farmed, worshiped and raised their children.

Anagbe’s warning comes as new field research directly refutes claims by officials in Abuja that security conditions are improving.

Statistical Evidence Refutes Federal Defense

The Nigerian federal government continues to reject characterizations of targeted religious violence. Government spokespersons attribute the crisis to multi-causal clashes between herders and farmers, citing military deployments as evidence of progress.

“The national crisis is a complex mosaic comprising resource-based herder clashes over grazing land,” presidential deputy spokesperson Philip Agbese claimed in statements defending the administration.

However, field tracking data compiled by Equipping The Persecuted (ETP) reveals that 4,216 Christians were killed in Nigeria between January 1 and September 8, 2026. That rate equals an average of 16.8 deaths per day, or one Christian killed every 86 minutes. At this rate, the annual death rate of Christians  will be over 6,000 by year’s end.

“When attacks are framed only as farmer-herder clashes, the actions of generalized rural violence or mass persecution may be misinterpreted as merely a development problem or a policing failure,” ETP noted in its report, Crisis in the Middle Belt: Religious Persecution and Security Failure in Nigeria. 

Independent scholars confirm that while central Nigeria faces multiple security threats, targeted anti-Christian aggression remains a primary driver of the crisis.

“Do I believe that Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt and North are being systematically targeted? Yes, I do,” Dr. Christopher Wadibia, an independent scholar and expert on Nigerian religious movements, told TruthNigeria. 

“Nigeria consistently ranks as a global epicenter of targeted anti-Christian violence. The data consistently supports this.”

Arms Pipelines and Communication Blackouts

Security analysts contend that military deployments will continue to falter unless authorities dismantle illicit weapons pipelines and fix severe rural communications gaps.

“Interceptions alone are not enough; there should be deeper investigations into those behind shipments of illegal arms, as well as arrests and prosecutions,” security analyst Dennis Amachree told TruthNigeria, citing recent customs seizures along major transit corridors. 

“Smaller-scale smuggling remains a problem, with weapons concealed in vehicle imports. But bulk shipments deserve urgent government-to-government scrutiny.”

Amachree also highlighted how infrastructural failures prevent vulnerable agricultural communities from calling for help when attacks begin.

“How do residents say something when they see something?” Amachree said, noting that spotty mobile network coverage regularly delays security responses during multi-hour village sieges. 

The Policy of Permanent Displacement

The violence has produced one of Africa’s largest internal displacement crises. Senior analysts from the ACLED Exploration Portal note that the second quarter of 2026 stood out as the most violent single quarter recorded in Nigeria since the database began tracking the country in 1997. Targeted attacks on civilians surged by 30 percent.

Data from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) places Nigeria’s internally displaced population at over 3.71 million, with more than 2 million concentrated in Benue State alone.

Despite ongoing violence, official initiatives to close internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and relocate victims away from their ancestral lands have drawn sharp criticism from Church officials. 

Human-rights advocates warn that permanently resettling victims outside their original villages effectively legitimizes land seizures by armed militias.

“We must move beyond the ‘camp culture’ and restore the dignity of the people in order to restore the entire social and economic fabric,” Fr. Remigius Ihyula of the Makurdi Diocese told TruthNigeria. 

“The objective is simple: to help our people become self-reliant on the lands of their ancestors, where they have their roots and which they have cultivated for centuries.”

Ihyula emphasized that prolonged displacement severely degrades social structures, noting that school dropout rates in IDP camps exceed 90 percent while basic healthcare and trauma support remain non-existent.

International Scrutiny Increases

International religious freedom monitors point out that successful recovery requires restoring victims to their original homelands under state protection rather than institutionalizing camp life.

“In Iraq, ACN and its Church partners made history when more than 50 percent of internally displaced people returned to nine villages that ISIS had destroyed,” Mark von Riedemann, ACN Director of Public Affairs, noted in an international report.

“The same success could be achieved in Nigeria if the government worked closely with local Church structures and received international support.”

Mary Kiara reports on Terrorism and Religious Freedom Policy for TruthNigeria.

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