By Eshiorameh Sebastian and Emiola Osifeso
The BBC has found that alarming figures cited by US politicians, including President Donald Trump, about the systematic killing of Christians in Nigeria are difficult to verify and present a misleading picture of the country’s complex security crises.
The assessment follows a fresh threat from Mr. Trump, who pledged in a video on Truth Social to “do things to Nigeria that Nigeria is not going to be happy about” if the government “continues to allow the killing of Christians.” He vowed to “go into that now-disgraced country guns-a-blazing.”
However, an investigation by the BBC’s Global Disinformation Unit reveals that the data underpinning these claims, which allege over 100,000 Christian deaths since 2009, is opaque and does not withstand scrutiny. The White House confirmed that a figure of 3,100 Christians killed, cited by Mr. Trump, came from the charity Open Doors. Yet, that same report noted that 2,320 Muslims were also killed in the same period.
The Nigerian government has pushed back strongly against the characterisation of the violence. Officials in Abuja described the claims as “a gross misrepresentation of reality.” While not denying the severity of the violence, the government stated that “terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology – Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike.”
The narrative of a targeted “genocide” against Christians has been gaining traction in Washington for weeks. Prominent US figures, including Senator Ted Cruz and television host Bill Maher, have publicly cited staggering figures. Senator Cruz wrote on X that “since 2009, over 50,000 Christians in Nigeria have been massacred, and over 18,000 churches and 2,000 Christian schools have been destroyed.”
His office directly referred the BBC to a 2023 report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (InterSociety), a Nigerian non-governmental organisation. This appears to be a primary source for the figures circulating in the US.
However, InterSociety’s work is opaque. The organisation did not share an itemised list of sources with the BBC, making independent verification of its totals impossible. In its August report, which amalgamated previous research, it claimed jihadist groups had killed over 100,000 Christians since 2009, alongside 60,000 “moderate Muslims.”
In response to criticism over its methodology, InterSociety told the BBC that “it is almost impossible to reproduce all our reports and their references dating back to 2010. Our easy method is to pick their summary statistics and add them to our fresh discoveries or findings to make up our new reports.”
Further analysis of InterSociety’s data for 2025 alone raised significant questions. The group concluded that just over 7,000 Christians were killed between January and August, a figure widely shared online. It provided a list of 70 media reports as sources. But the BBC found that in about half of these cases, the original news stories did not mention the religious identity of the victims at all.
For example, InterSociety quoted an Al Jazeera report, stating it said “not less than 40 farmers mainly Christians were abducted.” The original Al Jazeera report contained no reference to the victims being “mainly Christians.” InterSociety said it conducts further analysis using local knowledge and Christian media to determine background, but did not specify how in this instance.
Adding up the deaths referenced in the 70 reports cited by InterSociety yields a total of around 3,000, less than half the 7,000 claimed. To explain the shortfall, InterSociety said it includes estimates of those who die in captivity and eyewitness testimonies it cannot make public.
Other groups monitoring political violence in Nigeria provide vastly different numbers. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), which uses verifiable sources, has recorded just under 53,000 civilians killed in targeted political violence since 2009—a figure that includes both Muslims and Christians.
Acled’s data for the period from 2020 to September 2025 shows about 21,000 civilians were killed. Within that, it identified only 384 incidents where Christians were specifically targeted, resulting in 317 deaths. This suggests that while Christians are victims of violence, they represent a small proportion of the overall death toll from Nigeria’s multifarious conflicts.
Security analysts argue that the conflict is not primarily religious. Nigerian security analyst Christian Ani said that while Christians have been attacked as part of a broader strategy of creating terror, it was not possible to justify claims that Christians were deliberately being targeted.
A key point of contention is the labelling of violence involving Fulani herders. InterSociety consistently describes these herders as “jihadists.” But many researchers reject this, framing the clashes as conflicts over land, water, and resources that pit Fulani herders against both Muslim and Christian farming communities.
Confidence McHarry, a senior security analyst at SBM Intelligence, explained the complexity. “It might be ethnic in nature – they’re seeking to grab lands, they’re seeking to expand territory, but the more they displace communities and the more they attack worship centres, the more these things tend to get looked at in that light [as religious].”
He also noted that in the north-west, attacks on mosques and Muslim communities are common. “The reason why it is not assumed to have a religious dimension is down to the fact that the identities of the people who are carrying out these attacks against Muslims are themselves Muslims.”
The Campaigners Behind the Narrative
The promotion of the “Christian genocide” narrative in the US has been a concerted effort. The BBC found that a Biafran separatist group, the Biafra Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE), which is seeking a breakaway state in Nigeria’s mainly Christian south-east, claimed it had played a key role. The group described a “highly orchestrated effort,” saying it had hired lobbying firms and met US officials, including Senator Cruz, who declined to comment.
The Nigerian government maintains it is doing its best to tackle insurgents and criminal networks. While some officials have welcomed the prospect of US support in the fight, they have insisted it must not be done unilaterally.
The evidence suggests that while Nigeria is undeniably facing a severe and deadly security crisis, the framing of it as a one-sided genocide against Christians is a gross oversimplification that is not borne out by verifiable data. The violence, experts say, is a mosaic of jihadist insurgency, resource-based conflict, and criminality that claims victims on all sides.
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