ANALYSIS

Nigeria: who is killed, who tells the story, who should prosecute

3 October 2026 — Nigeria

Nigeria has about 230 million inhabitants. It is split roughly in half between Muslims, a majority in the north, and Christians, a majority in the south and in part of the centre. The census has not asked about religion for decades, so even this proportion is an estimate. For a year the country has been at the centre of a clash of narratives: for part of American politics a genocide of Christians is under way; for the government in Abuja religion has nothing to do with it. This piece tries to separate facts from narratives, and to ask who should answer for the dead.

The facts

On 31 October 2025 the United States put Nigeria back on its list of "Countries of Particular Concern" for religious freedom, a list it had left in 2023. The next day President Trump wrote that Christianity in Nigeria faces an "existential threat" and that the United States might go into the country "guns-a-blazing" to wipe out the Islamist terrorists (CBS News). Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied that the department was preparing for action. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu replied that religious freedom and tolerance are a founding principle of the country.

On 25 December 2025 US Africa Command struck Islamic State camps in Sokoto State, in the north-west, "in coordination with Nigerian authorities" (AFRICOM). It did not release a death toll. Since February 2026 American troops have arrived in Nigeria for training and technical support: about 100 in mid-February, about 200 with drones by the end of March, according to the think tank CSIS. On 15 May a joint operation killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, one of the main leaders of the Islamic State in West Africa (Washington Post).

Meanwhile the killings go on. On 26 September 2026 Amnesty International condemned the killing of at least 54 people in Zikke, in the Bassa area of Plateau State, two weeks after another attack with 52 dead in the same state (Sahara Reporters). On 8 September the Nigerian organisation Intersociety published a report saying that between January and August 2026 3,083 Christians were killed and 3,193 abducted (Catholic World Report).

Who is killed, and who counts the dead

Nigeria has no official, complete count of victims. There are several counts, made by different bodies with different criteria. Set side by side, they seem to contradict each other. In reality they answer different questions.

Sources as shown in the table. For Amnesty, Benue and Plateau are the worst-hit states. ACLED via The Week, 20/10/2025.

The key is in the third and fourth rows. ACLED counts as "religious" only attacks in which sources report the victim's religious identity as the motive. It is a narrow criterion, which leaves out most cases, those in which the motive is not stated or is mixed. Intersociety does the opposite: it counts all Christians killed, whoever the perpetrator and whatever the motive. It does not publish its methodology, and its reports are amplified mainly by Christian media and organisations. The same group also estimates Muslim victims: 61,400 "moderate Muslims" killed between 2009 and March 2026, a figure that also has no published method. The two figures do not prove that one of the two sources is lying. They prove that the question "how many Christians are killed because they are Christians" has no verified answer today.

What can be said with more certainty concerns where and by whom. The International Crisis Group, which has studied the country for years, describes at least four different, overlapping conflicts.

Source: International Crisis Group, 7/11/2025.

According to an ACLED study cited by Crisis Group, between January 2020 and June 2022 violence in which Christians were targeted for their religious identity made up about 5% of attacks on civilians. At the same time, in the Middle Belt, "most victims are Christians from farming villages". Both things are true at once.

Some incidents documented by Human Rights Watch in its 2026 report show how mixed the picture is. In June 2025 in Yelewata, Benue State, gunmen killed 59 people; according to residents, more than 100. On 19 August 2025 an attack on a mosque in Katsina State killed 32 Muslim worshippers.

The victims of state forces. There are also dead whom neither narrative deals with. In January 2025 a Nigerian Air Force raid in Zamfara State killed at least 20 civilians, with no public investigation to follow (HRW). On 10 May 2026, according to Amnesty, a military air strike killed at least 100 civilians at the Tumfa market, also in Zamfara. The army confirmed the raid and said it had no "verifiable evidence" of civilian casualties (AP via ABC News). In a mostly Muslim area, those victims were in all likelihood largely Muslim.

Who benefits from the confusion

Knowing who benefits from a war does not prove who wanted it. But it helps explain why it does not end. In Nigeria there is no need to imagine a mastermind: it is enough to look at who gains from the violence continuing and from no one describing it precisely. Here we stick to what is documented.

Ransoms. Almost 3,000 abductions in a year, according to Human Rights Watch, are an economy, not just a crime: every ransom paid funds the group that carried out the kidnapping, and the next kidnapping.

Gold. Zamfara and neighbouring states have gold deposits mined largely by artisanal and illegal means. Between 2012 and 2018 about 97 tonnes of gold, worth over 3 billion dollars, were smuggled out of Nigeria (Council on Foreign Relations). The governments of Zamfara and Katsina have complained that the proceeds are used by armed groups to buy weapons. In April 2019 the federal government suspended all mining in Zamfara precisely to break the link between bandits and illegal mines, but the ban has stayed largely on paper. In September 2026 a mapping exercise counted 374 illegal mining sites in 17 states (allAfrica).

Lithium, an open question. The Middle Belt, where the killings of Christian farmers are concentrated, is also the mineral zone: lithium, tin, columbite, across Plateau, Nasarawa and Kwara. Between 2023 and 2025 Chinese companies invested about 1.3 billion dollars in processing Nigerian lithium. In July 2026 a 250-million-dollar plant built by the Chinese firms Jiuling and Canmax opened in Nasarawa (Semafor). In Nigeria the theory circulates that villages are being emptied to free up land over the deposits. We found no systematic evidence of this link. We flag it as a geographical coincidence and as a question an investigation should answer, not as a fact.

Security funds. Nigerian governors and local administrations control security votes, security funds paid in cash, off budget, without parliamentary oversight and without audit. According to Transparency International (2018) they are worth about 670 million dollars a year, and are also used to fund election campaigns and for personal enrichment. More insecurity means more funds, and nobody has to account for how they are spent.

Weapons. Between 2021 and 2025 Nigeria was the largest arms importer in sub-Saharan Africa, with 16% of the region's imports (SIPRI). The suppliers are many. In August 2025 the United States approved the sale of munitions, bombs and precision rockets worth 346 million dollars, after a 997-million-dollar deal in 2022 for attack helicopters. Human Rights Watch asked Congress to make the sale conditional on safeguards, noting that Nigerian air strikes have repeatedly killed civilians without anyone being held to account (HRW). And there is Italy: Nigeria ordered 24 M-346FA light combat aircraft from Leonardo, the first of which was accepted on 27 July 2026 (Janes). The country we write from is also among the suppliers.

Legal analysis

1. The state's duty to protect. Nigeria has been a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights since 1993 and to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights since 1983. Both protect the right to life and freedom of religion (Covenant, articles 6 and 18; African Charter, articles 4 and 8). The UN Human Rights Committee, in its General Comment No. 36 of 2018, makes clear that the state must not only refrain from killing. It must also exercise due diligence to prevent killings by private individuals and armed groups, and investigate and prosecute those responsible when they occur. A state that does not protect its citizens, and then does not prosecute those who kill them, violates the Covenant even if it has not fired a shot. In July 2026 Human Rights Watch called the mass trials of Boko Haram suspects "ineffective", leaving victims without truth or justice (allAfrica).

2. Genocide: what it takes to call it that. Nigeria has been a party to the Genocide Convention since 2009. Article II defines genocide as a series of acts, starting with killing, committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such". The number of dead is not enough, nor is their religion. What is needed is the specific intent to destroy the group. The International Court of Justice, in its judgments on Bosnia (2007) and Croatia (2015), held that when this intent is inferred from facts, it must be the only reasonable conclusion possible. Applied to Nigeria: for the violence as a whole, with victims of both religions, economic and territorial motives and different perpetrators, the public data do not allow that conclusion to be reached. But the picture changes for some actors. The Islamic State and Boko Haram openly declare that they fight Christians and over the years have released videos of executions of Christian prisoners. For these groups the question of intent is open, and only a criminal investigation can answer it.

3. Crimes against humanity, and a Court that does not act. Nigeria ratified the Rome Statute in 2001, so the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed on its territory. The Office of the Prosecutor opened a preliminary examination in 2010. On 11 December 2020 Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda concluded it: there was a reasonable basis to believe that crimes against humanity and war crimes had been committed, both by Boko Haram and the groups that grew out of it, and by the Nigerian security forces. Article 15(3) of the Statute says that in this case the prosecutor shall submit to the judges a request for authorisation to open an investigation. The request never came. In December 2024 Amnesty International petitioned the judges to break the deadlock (Amnesty); the judges replied that they had no power to compel the prosecutor to act. In March 2026 Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang signed a memorandum of understanding with the Nigerian government: Nigeria investigates and prosecutes on its own, with joint action plans and periodic reviews. The principle is called complementarity (article 17): the Court steps in only if the state is unwilling or unable to prosecute. But according to several jurists the Statute does not provide for this step. Valérie Gabard, of the organisation UpRights, called it "a very unusual procedural step, currently outside of the framework" of the Court's rules (JusticeInfo; see also Opinio Juris). Sixteen years have passed since the examination was opened and almost six since it was concluded. On this site we have already written about the Court that issues warrants nobody enforces; here the problem comes earlier: there is no warrant because there is no investigation.

4. The American intervention. The UN Charter (article 2(4)) prohibits the threat or use of force against another state. The threat to go into Nigeria "guns-a-blazing", made in November 2025 without Abuja's consent, falls under the prohibition. The later strikes have a different legal basis: the consent of the Nigerian government. Armed intervention at the request or with the consent of the territorial state is in principle lawful. But the rules of humanitarian law on the protection of civilians still apply, to the United States as much as to the Nigerian army. Two things must be kept apart. The legal basis is consent, not the religion of the victims: international law does not recognise a right to intervene to protect a religious group without Security Council authorisation. And the operations take place mainly in the north-west and north-east, that is precisely where, according to the available data, most victims are Muslim.

5. Blasphemy, and the death penalty. In the twelve northern states that apply sharia in criminal matters too, blasphemy can be punished by death. On 10 August 2020 an Islamic court in Kano sentenced Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a young Muslim musician, to death for an audio message shared on WhatsApp (section 382(b) of the Kano Sharia Penal Code). His appeal is before the federal Supreme Court. The hearing set for 25 June 2026 was taken off the calendar, and Sharif-Aminu has been in prison for more than six years (Sahara Reporters). Blasphemy accusations also kill outside the courts: in May 2022 in Sokoto Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a Christian student, was lynched by fellow college students over a message deemed blasphemous. The UN Human Rights Committee considers blasphemy laws incompatible with the Covenant (General Comment No. 34, para. 48). And the death penalty, where it has not been abolished, is allowed only for the "most serious crimes", meaning intentional killing: never for an opinion. More generally, Nigeria carried out no executions in 2025, but it keeps handing down death sentences. According to Amnesty's 2025 report on the death penalty, there were at least 243 new death sentences in 2025, up 31%, and at least 3,833 people are waiting on death row. Some sentences are mandatory, which international law prohibits. A bill has been introduced in the Senate to make death the mandatory penalty for kidnapping as well; in the House of Representatives, one to abolish capital punishment. We wrote about it in The condemned woman who did not die.

6. Who sells weapons. The Arms Trade Treaty (2013), to which both Nigeria and Italy are parties, requires the exporting state to assess before each authorisation whether the weapons could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of humanitarian law or human rights. If the risk is overriding, the export must not be authorised (article 7). The United States signed the Treaty but never ratified it, and in 2019 announced that it did not intend to become a party. In Italy, Italian Law 185/1990 also applies: it prohibits arms exports to countries whose governments are responsible for serious human rights violations established by the competent bodies of the UN, the European Union or the Council of Europe (article 1, paragraph 6). The Treaty obligation, however, goes further: it does not wait for a formal finding, but depends on what the exporter knows or should know. And the Nigerian strikes on civilians are documented.

The symmetry test

The same questions, turned around.

If those dying in the Middle Belt were Muslims, killed by Christian militias, would we use the same words? It is a concrete question, not a theoretical one: Fulani communities, who are Muslim, also suffer attacks and reprisals, which receive far less international attention. The standard must be the same. An attack is a crime because of what it does to the victims, not because of the religion of those who kill or of those who die.

If the 100 civilians at the Tumfa market had been killed by an army hostile to the West, would there have been more coverage? The raid was carried out by the Nigerian Air Force, that is by the ally with which the United States conducts its operations against the Islamic State. The same obligations of humanitarian law apply to both.

And it applies to those who sell weapons, Italy included. The yardstick we use for American weapons also applies to Italian aircraft delivered to an air force whose strikes, according to Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, have killed civilians without anyone being held to account.

And the test applies to the Court. In other situations, when the ICC Office of the Prosecutor concluded that crimes had been committed, it asked the judges to investigate. In Nigeria it did not. If the memorandum becomes a model, any government under examination will be able to propose the same route: I will investigate. That is exactly what the Statute was meant to prevent.

Editorial judgment

This section expresses the site's position. It is separate from the facts set out above.

In Nigeria people die for many reasons, and faith is one of them. But the two narratives competing over the country share a flaw: each erases some of the dead. The "genocide of Christians" narrative erases the Muslims killed by jihadists and gangs in the north, and those killed by their own army's bombs. Abuja's narrative, in which religion plays no part and it is all about land and crime, erases the Christian villages of the Middle Belt and the prisoners executed on video because they were Christian. A site called "I will not look away" cannot choose which dead to look at.

There is one point on which the facts are clear, and that is the responsibility of the state. The Nigerian government does not protect its citizens, whether Christian or Muslim, and does not prosecute those who kill them. That is the documentable violation, and it does not depend on what you call it.

As for the United States, it is a good thing when a great power cares about civilians being killed. But when victims count because they are Christian, Muslim victims risk counting for nothing. And an intervention built on that criterion undermines the very universality of rights it claims to defend.

Then there is a simpler reason why so many are interested in Nigeria. It has oil, gas, gold and lithium. After the forced exit of the Americans from Niger in 2024 and the arrival of the Russians in the Sahel, it is the large country in the region that has remained tied to the West. And every year it buys weapons. The world is thirsty for resources, seeks influence and meanwhile sells arms: in Nigeria the three add up. We are not saying that anyone started this conflict to profit from it. We are saying that too many profit from it for anyone to be in a hurry to end it. And that the confusion over who dies and why suits all of them, because a war without a clear narrative raises no questions.

That leaves the Court. In 2020 its Office of the Prosecutor stated in black and white that crimes against humanity had been committed in Nigeria, by both sides. Since then it has not asked to investigate, and it has signed an agreement that hands the investigation to the very state whose forces are among the suspects. In Nigeria there is no shortage of people who kill, and no shortage of people who count the dead. What is missing is someone to prosecute.

What to watch

• The periodic reviews provided for in the memorandum between the ICC Office of the Prosecutor and Nigeria, and any new petitions to the judges.
• Yahaya Sharif-Aminu's appeal before the federal Supreme Court.
• The two death penalty bills: abolition in the House of Representatives, extension to kidnapping in the Senate.
• The American military presence and the investigations, if any, into the Tumfa raid.
• The attacks in Plateau State and the investigations promised by the government.
• Deliveries of the Italian M-346FA aircraft and any use in air strikes, and the conditions (if any) set by the US Congress on arms sales.

Related pieces: The condemned woman who did not die. Who still uses the death penalty, and which limits of the law they breach · Two warrants, zero arrests · Ecuador, war by decree: calling crime a war to change the rules

Sources: CBS News (11/2025) · AFRICOM (25/12/2025) · CSIS (18/5/2026) · Washington Post (16/5/2026) · Sahara Reporters — Amnesty on Plateau (26/9/2026) · Catholic World Report — Intersociety (8/9/2026) · France 24 — Amnesty (29/5/2025) · The Week — ACLED data (20/10/2025) · International Crisis Group (7/11/2025) · Human Rights Watch — World Report 2026: Nigeria · AP via ABC News (12/5/2026) · Council on Foreign Relations (12/2/2021) · allAfrica — illegal mining sites (28/9/2026) · Semafor (8/7/2026) · Transparency International — Camouflaged Cash (5/2018) · SIPRI — Trends in international arms transfers 2025 (3/2026) · Human Rights Watch — US-Nigeria weapons sale (19/8/2025) · Janes — M-346FA (7/2026) · UN Human Rights Committee — General Comment No. 36 · UN Human Rights Committee — General Comment No. 34 · allAfrica — HRW on Boko Haram trials (22/7/2026) · ICJ — Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro (2007) · ICJ — Croatia v. Serbia (2015) · ICC — Statement of the Prosecutor (11/12/2020) · Amnesty International — petition to ICC judges (12/2024) · ICC — Memorandum of Understanding with Nigeria (3/2026) · JusticeInfo (22/5/2026) · Opinio Juris (23/4/2026) · Sahara Reporters — Sharif-Aminu (21/9/2026) · Amnesty International — Death Sentences and Executions 2025 (5/2026)

Verification note: the casualty figures come from sources with different criteria, set out in the text. Intersociety is a partisan source and does not publish its methodology. Open Doors, International Christian Concern and ADF International were not used as sources. Situation as of 3 October 2026.

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