Over 16,000 Nigerian Christian were killed between 2019 and 2023, a report has said.
The 136-page report released in August by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), said followers of Christ were victims of violence more than adherent of other religions in the African country.
ORFA said it documented 55,910 fatalities from 9,97o attacks during the four years, adding that of those killed, 30,880 were civilians while Christian victims totalled 16,769. The number of Christian victims was far more that of Muslim victims which was 6,235.
The report, titled “Countering the myth of religious indifference in Nigerian terror,” also said radicalised Muslim Fulani carried out 55 per cent of the killings of the Christians.
“Islamic extremists enjoy relative freedom to carry out atrocities against civilians in large regions of Nigeria,” it said.
“For over a decade atrocities against civilians in Nigeria have been downplayed or minimised. This has proved a major obstacle for those seeking to understand the violence.
“Misleading euphemisms, such as ‘armed herdsmen’ and ‘cattle grazers’ are used to describe continual waves of invasion, torture and killing in rural communities. Descriptions of attacks as ‘ethnic clashes,’ farmer-herders clashes’ or retaliatory attacks are seriously misleading,” the document said.
ORFA said across Nigeria, over 21,621 people were abducted in 2,705 attacks, with several incidents overlapping.
It recorded 11,610 distinct attacks where individuals were killed or abducted, adding that 8,905 of these involved only killings, 1,065 included both killings and abductions and 1,640 involved only abductions.
The report further stated of the 21,532 civilians abducted, 11,185 were Christians and 7,899 were Muslims.
Read the full report here.
