Al Jazeera publishes opinion piece denying the reality of genocide against Nigerian Christians
By Easton Martin | October 29, 2025
In late September, Bill Maher spoke on his show Real Time about a problem that has lasted in Nigeria for more than ten years. He pointed to tens of thousands of Christians killed and thousands of churches destroyed by Islamist militants.
A few days later, Gimba Kakanda wrote an opinion piece for Al Jazeera that rejected the idea of a “Christian genocide.” Kakanda works as Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Research and Analytics in the Office of the Vice President. He described the violence as the result of many factors, mainly competition for resources, climate issues, and disputes between herders and farmers. Religion, he said, plays only a small part. He added that Christians do suffer, but Muslims face more deaths overall and the attacks do not target one group. This view uses some real facts, but it hides a clear pattern of attacks aimed at Christians that fits the legal meaning of genocide.
The United Nations Genocide Convention from 1948 gives a clear definition. It says genocide means acts done with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious harm to body or mind, creating conditions meant to destroy the group physically, stopping births in the group, or taking children away by force. The rule states that the people who do these acts do not have to work for a government. Groups outside the state can commit genocide, and it can affect only part of the group. In Nigeria, Fulani militants with jihadist goals and groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province have run long campaigns that match this definition.
Groups that watch these issues have kept records of the numbers. Since 2009, reports show between 50,000 and 125,000 Christians killed. Open Doors looks at Christian persecution around the world each year. It names Nigeria as the place where the most Christians die because of their faith, more than in all other countries put together. From 2019 to 2023, Fulani militants caused 55 percent of the recorded Christian deaths. In that same time, attackers burned between 18,000 and 19,000 churches and took over more than 1,100 villages, forcing whole communities to leave.
In 2025 alone, more than 7,000 Christians have died. Intersociety is a Nigerian human rights group, with its reports being used by Members of the U.S. Congress. The group noted over 100 Christians killed and 120 taken in just 76 days that ended in late October. Bishops and other church leaders in Nigeria have said these numbers match what they see.
Events from recent weeks show how the attacks seem to follow a pattern. On October 14, Fulani militants hit 14 Christian villages in Plateau State and killed at least 13 people. A few days later, more raids in the same area took another 25 lives. In the Takum area of Taraba State, militants stepped up attacks on Christian farming villages. Catholic leaders there asked for help in public statements. People who lived through the raids say the attackers used Islamic phrases, left Muslim neighbors alone, raped women and forced them to change religion, and then moved onto the land.
Kakanda’s article blames the violence on fights between herders and farmers made worse by dry land and lack of money. The facts point to another reason. Many Fulani militants keep cattle during the day, but they come with AK-47s and attack only Christian areas in the Middle Belt, where the soil is good for crops. After they kill or chase away the people, they stay on the land and say it now belongs to Islam.
Genocide Watch follows countries on a list of ten steps toward genocide. It puts Nigeria at step 9, which means extermination, and calls the process a slow removal of Christians.
In the northeast part of the country, Boko Haram and ISWAP follow a similar plan. They do kill Muslims who do not follow their strict rules, but their main goal is to set up a Muslim state ruled by their laws. In the Middle Belt, they go after Christians most of all, with bombs in churches and full attacks on villages. Open Doors records a common sequence of events in the country: men killed, women taken to convert and marry. Muslims have died in large numbers, about 60,000 since 2009 by some counts, but Christians suffer the most in attacks tied to religion. They make up around 90 percent of the victims in violence based on faith.
The government in Nigeria answers with little action and often refuses to admit the problem. Officials call the killings “clashes between communities,” almost never put anyone on trial, and send soldiers in ways that leave Christian places open to attack. The administration of President Tinubu points to fewer deaths in general, but church leaders still get threats when they report what happens. One pastor filmed rows of graves after a massacre. He received death threats and said his death might push others to fight back. More than 15 million people have had to leave their homes inside Nigeria, and most of them are Christians.
People outside Nigeria have started to speak up. U.S. Representative Riley Moore has used information from meetings in Congress. He has asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to put Nigeria back on the list as a Country of Particular Concern. This label means the U.S. looks closely at aid to the country. The label was in place during the Trump years, removed under Biden, and violence went down while it was used. Bishops in Nigeria have said they welcome this kind of support because it backs up what they have said for years.
Kakanda’s piece in Al Jazeera shows the same kind of denial it claims to avoid. It turns clear proof of attacks based on religion into simple talk about money and land, while it skips the role of jihadist beliefs that drive the killers. His high job in the Tinubu government makes the article look like propaganda paid for by the state. It covers up the facts to protect the leaders from blame and from pressure outside the country. By putting religion second to other causes, Kakanda fails to honor those who have died and puts more lives at risk. To say there is no genocide when the writer works for the government is to help the genocide continue. The world needs to put Nigeria back on the CPC list, place sanctions on those who help the attacks, and listen to the people who have survived. Christians in Nigeria keep holding services in the places where their churches once stood. They need the truth to be told, not excuses from someone on the government’s staff.
