The International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) has expressed concern that armed herders, Boko Haram terrorists, and other jihadist groups demolish approximately 1,200 churches in Nigeria each year.
According to the rights group’s findings, over 100 churches are targeted each month, totaling approximately 19,100 churches burned or sacked during the last 16 years.
According to Intersociety’s latest report, Nigeria has approximately 113 million Christians. This includes 32 million sedentary Christians, 8 million pastoral Christians in the North, and an estimated 70 million indigenous Christians in the South.
According to the group’s chairman, Emeka Umeagbalasi, approximately 3 million traditional worshippers are among the “40 million sedentary or indigenous and non-indigenous Christians” who live in Northern Nigeria.
Many of them, he said, were formerly Christians and still have Christian names. He also revealed that among the 70 million indigenous Christians in the South, approximately 10 million practice traditional religions.
Umeagbalasi went on to say that Nigeria has around 100 million Muslims, 76 million in the north and 24 million in the south, with Lagos, Oyo, Osun, and Edo States accounting for a sizable proportion.
On the scale of attacks, he explained, “Razing or sacking of an estimated 19,100 churches shows that apart from the 13,000 churches attacked, burnt, or violently shut down between July 2009 and December 2014, an additional 6,100 have been lost to Islamic jihadists since mid-2015 in Taraba, Adamawa, Kebbi, Borno, Katsina, Niger, Kogi, Nasarawa, Plateau, Benue, Bauchi, Yobe, Southern Kaduna, and Gombe.”
The group also accused security personnel of involvement in religious profiling and violence in the Southeast. According to Umeagbalasi, since January 2021, security operations in Orlu, Imo State, have targeted traditional religionists and their shrines in the name of combating IPOB, whose leaders he claims are Jewish.
He warned that ongoing attacks on churches have “emptied thousands of parishes and outstations” throughout the country, notably in the North, where Christian populations have been displaced.
“The Archdiocese of Kaduna, covering the Diocese of Sokoto with parishes in Zamfara, Kebbi, and Katsina, now exists with skeletal parishes and near-empty church buildings,” Umeagbalasi said.
He stated that Benue State, which is home to four dioceses (Makurdi, Gboko, Otukpo, and Katsina-Ala) and has the greatest Catholic and denominational Christian population in Northern Nigeria, is under significant threat. He said that Islamist Fulani herders have forced the closure of over 20 parishes and hundreds of outstations.
In Plateau State, he continued, the Catholic Archdiocese of Jos and its suffragan dioceses of Bauchi, Maiduguri, Jalingo, Pankshin, Shendam, Wukari, and Yola face “serious congregational emptiness and evangelical devastation.”
Similarly, in Niger State, Christian villages of Shiroro, Munya, Rafi, and Paikoro, all under the dioceses of Minna and Kontagora, have been uprooted and attacked by Boko Haram and Fulani bandits.
“The Catholic Diocese of Lokoja under the Archdiocese of Abuja is also facing a serious threat, worsened by the recent activities of jihadist groups such as Mahmuda and Lakaruwa Islamic fighters and their patrons,” Intersociety further alleged.
The group emphasized that these systematic attacks are part of an ongoing campaign of religious cleansing, calling on both the government and the international community to intervene before Nigeria’s Christian population is irreversibly devastated.
