{"id":14593,"date":"2026-01-01T07:06:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T07:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=14593"},"modified":"2026-01-01T07:06:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T07:06:33","slug":"nigerian-government-accused-of-being-in-denial-about-persecution-of-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=14593","title":{"rendered":"Nigerian government accused of being in denial about persecution of Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n                            <span>A survivor of violence in Mangu in what is left of his home after an attack by extremists.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">\u00a0(Photo: Open Doors)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Nigerian government has been accused of being in denial about the scale of anti-Christian violence conducted by Islamic militants.<\/p>\n<p>The plight of Nigeria\u2019s Christian community has been taken up by US President Donald Trump, who in late October said he would be designating Nigeria as a \u201cCountry of Particular Concern\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Trump proceeded to escalate matters in dramatic fashion with a series of airstrikes on Christmas Day, targeting Islamic militants in northwest Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>While the Nigerian government played a role in coordinating the strikes, it has denied Trump\u2019s claim that, \u201cThey\u2019re [the militants] killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We\u2019re not going to allow that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Open Doors, ranks Nigeria as the 7th worst persecutor of Christians in the world, despite the fact that Christians account for around half the population.<\/p>\n<p>More Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than in all other countries around the world combined. Open Doors estimates that this year around 3,100 Christians have been killed in Nigeria, out of 4,476 killed worldwide. The Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law estimates that as many as 7,000 have been killed this year.<\/p>\n<p>In response to the violence, Nigeria\u2019s president, Bola Tinubu, last month announced a national security emergency and pledged to double the size of the country\u2019s police force. Tinubu also suggested that Muslims were being killed by Christians, although there is no evidence that this occurs in anything but the most isolated of incidents.<\/p>\n<p>Christian leaders have denounced attempts to portray the violence as a \u201csocial conflict\u201d between Muslim herdsmen and Christian farmers over land and resources.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to <em>The Telegraph<\/em>, the Rev John Hayab, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, said, \u201cThere is religious persecution in northern Nigeria and I can tell the Nigerian government that the reason why we are not addressing it is because we are living in denial.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you are denying, it is as if you are supporting the man who is killing us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tiffany Barrens, global advocacy director for Open Doors International, told the paper, \u201cTen years ago, it was more about land and resources. What we have seen increasingly is that the religious element has become more apparent. I think people are afraid to recognise the religious element, because they are afraid it will lead to more division.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A survivor of violence in Mangu in what is left of his home after an attack by extremists.\u00a0(Photo: Open Doors) The Nigerian government has been accused of being in denial about the scale of anti-Christian violence conducted by Islamic militants. The plight of Nigeria\u2019s Christian community has been taken up by US President Donald Trump,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[4377,119,2099,210,2859,98],"class_list":["post-14593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-christian-living","tag-accused","tag-christians","tag-denial","tag-government","tag-nigerian","tag-persecution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}