‘A Gory Christmas’: Christians Slaughtered in the Nigerian Genocide

Gatestone Institute

Yesterday, January 7, 2024, marked the Eastern Orthodox Christmas, according to the Julian calendar. Less than two weeks earlier, on December 25, 2023, the more familiar Catholic and Protestant Christmas was celebrated in the West. This winter, however, festivities were cancelled. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, was a ghost town . “This year,” said Brother John Vinh, a Franciscan monk, “without the Christmas tree and without lights, there’s just darkness.” Alas, for many other Christians, Christmas was also just darkness.

While around much of the world, the holiday was being celebrated with peace and joy, in Nigeria, starting on Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day, Muslims massacred nearly 200 Christians.  Well-armed Muslim Fulani tribesmen hacked, stabbed, riddled with bullets, and burned alive their Christian victims, many of whom were in the process of celebrating Christmas.

According to one report,

At least 25 communities across three Local Government Areas [in Plateau State] were targeted. Survivors recounted militia men attacking in large numbers, indiscriminately killing and destroying homes, vehicles, farmlands and other properties.  About 37 individuals, primarily women, children and the disabled, were burned to death in their homes. Eight churches and parsonages were also destroyed…

The number of slain is expected to rise.  “Yes, my village was attacked on Christmas Eve, and other villages close to my community,” confirmed Timothy, a local, during an interview.  “More dead bodies were found in the bush today…  Many houses were burnt including my church. I can’t say how many people were killed but we found more dead bodies today and we are looking for missing ones.”

Over 300 Christians were also seriously injured, 29,350 people displaced, and countless homes and churches—in just one village, 221 homes—torched during the jihadist raids.

Four family members of Naomi, another local, were murdered, and she displaced: “My house was burnt,” she said, “and I mourned on Christmas day.”

Several Christian leaders were also killed, including one pastor, his wife, and five children, said Dawzino Mallau, another local: “These terrorists who attacked these Christian communities were in the hundreds,” he added, “and they carried out the attacks as the hapless Christians were preparing for Christmas programs lined up by their pastors.”

Underscoring the scale of the attack, photos showed victims being buried in mass graves.

“This indeed has been a gory Christmas for us,” Plateau governor Caleb Mutfwang said in a statement that characterized the attacks as “well-coordinated” and carried out with “heavy weapons.”

Another report helps place this massacre in context:

Most of the Christians killed were women, children and the elderly unable to escape.…. Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in the Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam… Nigeria led the world in Christians killed for their faith in 2022, with 5,014, according to Open Doors’ 2023 World Watch List (WWL) report. It also led the world in Christians abducted (4,726), sexually assaulted or harassed, forcibly married or physically or mentally abused, and it had the most homes and businesses attacked for faith-based reasons. As in the previous year, Nigeria had the second most church attacks and internally displaced people.

Due to its “sensationalist” nature—nearly 200 Christians killed, and during Christmas time no less—this attack received a fair bit of reporting on larger “alt-right” and conservative news sites.  In reality, however, no aspect of these attacks—neither the amount of Christians massacred, nor the time of year they were massacred in—is unique or “new” to Nigeria.

As elsewhere, Islamic terrorists in Nigeria regularly target Christians during their holy seasons.  Indeed, nearly 13 years ago, during Christmas of 2011, the Gatestone Institute reported that

Several churches in northern Nigeria were bombed December 25 [2011], in what has been described as ‘Nigeria’s blackest Christmas ever.’ The attacks, perpetrated by the Muslim militant group Boko Haram, killed at least 39 people, ‘the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church [in Madalla near the capital of Abuja] after celebrating Christmas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion.’ Charred bodies and dismembered limbs lay scattered around the destroyed church.

In fact, there have been no shortage of attacks on Christians during Christmas and other holy seasons in Nigeria.  A few examples from before and after 2011’s supposedly “blackest Christmas ever” follow:

• Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2010: Muslims torched and bombed several churches, leaving at least 38 Christians dead and 74 in critical condition.
• Easter Sunday, Apr. 8, 2012: During communion, at least 50 Christians were blown to bits after explosives went off near the Assemblies of God’s Church during Easter Sunday services in a predominantly Muslim region.
• Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2012: In two separate attacks, Islamic gunmen shot and killed 12 Christian worshippers who had gathered for Christmas Eve church services, including a pastor.
• Easter week, 2013: Muslim herdsmen launched a series of raids, killing at least 80 Christians—mostly children and the elderly; additionally, over 200 Christian homes were destroyed, eight churches burned, and 4,500 Christians displaced.
• Easter Sunday, Apr. 20, 2014: A packed church was set ablaze, leaving over 150 dead.
• Christmas Day, 25, 2015: The  Islamic group Boko Haram slaughtered 16 Christians, including children.
• Pentecost Sunday, June 5, 2022: Terrorists stormed a Catholic church and massacred at least 50 Christians .  Videos, according to one report, “showed church worshippers lying in pools of blood while people around them wailed.”

The above is just a miniscule sampling of attacks on Christians that were intentionally timed to coincide with their holy days.  In reality, the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria is a daily affair—indeed, as Open Doors observed nearly two years ago, “every two hours, a Christian is killed for their faith” in Nigeria.

Muslims are openly committing genocide against Christians in Nigeria.  This has been confirmed by several  international observers. According to one report,  between just 2009 and Apr. 10, 2023, 52,250 Christians “have been butchered or hacked to death” in Nigeria.   Since then, that number has continued to grow (not only due to the 200 slain on Christmas, but the many others who were slaughtered since Apr. 10, 2023, as documented in the monthly “Persecution of Christians report”). Also since 2009, 18,000 churches and 2,200 Christian schools were attacked, many “destroyed in part or in whole including being razed or burned down.”

In the meantime, the “mainstream” media and politicians have done everything possible to conceal this genocide, presenting it only as territorial clashes between herdsmen and farmers.

For example, in its report on last Christmas’s slaughter of nearly 200 Christians, the AP fails to mention that the massacres occurred during Christmas, just as it fails to mention the identities of the attackers (Muslims) and their victims (Christians).  Rather, it presents the conflict, as many talking heads increasingly do, as the regrettable byproduct of climate change, which is forcing herdsmen (Muslims) to encroach on the lands of farmers (Christians).

Similarly, when reporting on the Pentecost Sunday church bombing of 2022, which left 50 Christian worshippers dead, the words “Muslim,” “Islam,” or even “Islamist” never appeared in the AP report. Rather, readers were told that “It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church.”  To maintain this ambiguity, the AP also failed to point out that Islamic terrorists have routinely stormed churches and slaughtered thousands of Christians “for sport” over the years in Nigeria — a fact that just might have offered a hint as to “who was behind the attack.”  But dissembling over what is happening to Nigeria’s Christians is an old “mainstream media” tactic (as discussed in this 2011 article).

One need only consider the words of Johnnie Carson, Obama’s then- Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, speaking after Muslim terrorists slaughtered  50 Christian church worshippers on Easter Sunday, 2012: “I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence [in Nigeria].”  Instead, “inequality” and “poverty”—to quote  former President William Jefferson Clinton—are “what’s fueling all this stuff” (“this stuff” being the massacre of Christians at the hands of Muslims).

But as a Nigerian nun, Sister Monica Chikwe, once observed,

It’s tough to tell Nigerian Christians this isn’t a religious conflict since what they see are Fulani fighters clad entirely in black, chanting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and screaming ‘Death to Christians.’

Or as the Christian Association of Nigeria once rhetorically asked,

How can it be a [secular or economic] clash when one group [Muslims] is persistently attacking, killing, maiming, destroying, and the other group [Christians] is persistently being killed, maimed and their places of worship destroyed?

In 2018, the National Christian Elders Forum of Nigeria succinctly summarized the ultimate source behind the genocide of Christians in Nigeria:

JIHAD has been launched in Nigeria by the Islamists of northern Nigeria led by the Fulani ethnic group. This Jihad is based on the Doctrine of Hate taught in Mosques and Islamic Madrasas in northern Nigeria as well as the supremacist ideology of the Fulani. Using both conventional (violent) Jihad, and stealth (civilization) Jihad, the Islamists of northern Nigeria seem determined to turn Nigeria into an Islamic Sultanate and replace Liberal Democracy with Sharia as the National Ideology. … We want a Nigeria, where citizens are treated equally before the law at all levels….

In the midst of the jihadist carnage of Christians has been the Biden administration’s bizarre response.  In 2020, Trump placed Nigeria on the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern—that is, nations which engage in, or tolerate violations of, religious freedom.  Under Biden, however, the State Department removed Nigeria—this nation where one Christian is butchered every two hours—from the list.

Many observers responded by slamming the Biden State Department for this inexplicable move. As Sean Nelson, Legal Counsel for Global Religious Freedom for ADF International, noted:

Outcry over the State Department’s removal of Country of Particular Concern status for Nigeria’s religious freedom violations is entirely warranted. No explanations have been given that could justify this decision. If anything, the situation in Nigeria has grown worse over the last year. Thousands of Christians, as well as Muslims who oppose the goals of terrorist and militia groups, are targeted, killed, and kidnapped, and the government is simply unwilling to stop these atrocities. … Removing Country of Particular Concern status for Nigeria will only embolden the increasingly authoritarian government there.

Incidentally and to his credit, along with placing Nigeria on the list, Trump, with characteristic bluntness, one asked the then Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, “Why are you killing Christians?”

At any rate, such is the current state of affairs: a jihad of genocidal proportions has for some 15 years been waged on the Christian population of Nigeria—even as American media and government present Nigeria’s problems in purely economic terms that defy reality.

Put differently, for mainstream media and politicians, black lives—well over 50,000 and counting—do not matter. At least not when those lives are Christian and being slaughtered by Muslims.