When noted religious skeptic and TV host Bill Maher highlighted the plight of Christians in Nigeria in September during a conversation with South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, he raised a conversation that’s been an ongoing tension for many of us in the humanitarian space: the conflicts that cause the greatest suffering don’t always correlate to the greatest attention.
Reflecting on the atrocities taking place in Nigeria, Maher bemoaned on the show: ‘This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what’s going on in Gaza. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country. Where are the kids protesting this?’ Here’s the thing: Gazans’ suffering is legitimate. Just as Israel’s suffering on October 7, 2023, and beyond was legitimate. And also, so is the suffering in Sudan and Yemen and Syria and Nigeria. What differs is the attention we bestow and our willingness to sit in the complexities and discomfort necessary to come to lasting solutions.
I grew up in Niger. I spent my childhood in the Sahel region in a time when a Christian in a Muslim-majority region could expect to live in relative peace and optimism. Growing up, I knew many mixed-faith Nigerian families that lived in harmony. As a nation and as a region, we had hope. The promises of the green revolution, trade and the West African Economic community caused us to anticipate a trajectory of growth.
Today’s Nigeria does not look like that of my youth. Climate change, capitalism, debt, corruption, the COVID-19 crisis and shifting donor trends have all caused more poverty, less hope and more conflict. It’s been tragic to see my home region devolve into a dangerous area where tolerance has been replaced with extremism and religion has become weaponized to fill the void left as hope dispersed and hunger increased.
When people are desperate, we see increases in extremism and religious persecution. Nigeria is divided almost along the cardinal ordinances into Muslim-majority regions and Christian and Catholic sections. Factors embedded from colonial days compound with climate shifts that make a nomadic lifestyle unsustainable have spilled into untenable animosity that cuts along religious affiliations.
As Liam Karr, Critical Threats Africa team lead with the American Enterprise Institute, aptly breaks down, when you layer religious undertones over an existing ethnic divide and scare resources, conflict emerges.
Being a Christian in Nigeria is no longer a simple matter. Jihadist organizations, including Boko Haram, have exercised religiously implicated killings over the last 16 years, massacring 125,009 Christians and over 60,000 ‘liberal’ Muslims who do not share the extremist views of the prevailing groups. 19,100 churches have been sacked in that time. Now, according to Open Doors, more Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world, combined, even though Nigeria is 7th out of the top 50 countries known for persecution of Christians.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, 16.2 million Christians have had to leave their homes, including a large number of Nigerians. For Nigerians, this often means living as displaced persons in Chad.
To change this, you must marry hope with solutions that address underlying causes of instability. At World Relief, we work to meet both the tangible needs and spiritual needs of a population, in partnership with the church. This is the only solution in a multi-faith space. To build social cohesion, trust, shared responsibility and sustainable peacebuilding, you can’t ignore either the tangible or the intangible.
Unfortunately for an international audience that desires clean lines and quick fixes, this kind of work doesn’t resolve overnight. Our sisters and brothers in Christ deserve our sustained attention and support, whether they’re in the Gaza Strip or Syria or the Sahel.
In the short term, we must provide access for additional humanitarian resources on the ground to alleviate some of the drivers of the conflict. Higher level conversations to address religious tensions will be eased when those factors low on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are dealt with first.
I’m grateful for the attention U.S. policymakers have given the situation in recent months; between resolutions made in the House in March, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s introduction of legislation and West Virginia Republican Rep. Riley Moore’s appeal to Secretary of State Marco Rubio this fall. All three advocate redesignating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern and we’re beginning to see a much-needed groundswell.
Additionally, the U.S. offers a unique venue to provide relief for refugees who have a credible fear of persecution in the U.S. refugee resettlement program. In President Donald Trump’s first term, he was the first president to expressly name religious persecution to be of key importance for individuals served through the program.
Due to the government shutdown, we are still anticipating the Presidential Determination for Refugee Resettlement for FY2026, and I urge the president to consider populations like those Christians in Nigeria whose safety could be secured through a resettlement quota of at least the 50,000 that he set as the ceiling in 2017.
It’s up to us as U.S. consumers of media and information to seek out news of our siblings in Christ around the world. Newsrooms respond to demand; as we give our attention abroad, coverage will improve. Now more than ever we need transparent eyes and ears into situations where evil is at work in the dark, and the U.S. church is uniquely poised to leverage its considerable influence in bringing light to the darkness.
Finally, let us not cease to lament and petition Christ on behalf of our sisters and brothers around the world. As the global church, we participate in Christ’s suffering as we participate in the suffering of others. He is with the suffering, and his attention does not waver.