{"id":18928,"date":"2025-09-18T07:41:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T06:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/?p=18928"},"modified":"2025-09-18T06:44:31","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T05:44:31","slug":"report-100-churches-attacked-monthly-by-jihadists-in-nigeria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/18\/report-100-churches-attacked-monthly-by-jihadists-in-nigeria\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: 100 Churches attacked monthly by jihadists in Nigeria"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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YAOUND\u00c9, Cameroon \u2013 A new report by has revealed that a hundred churches are destroyed in the African nation of Nigeria every month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attacks are carried out by several jihadist organizations including Boko Haram insurgents and Fulani Herdsmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report from the Nigeria based NGO \u2013 International society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, intersociety said 1200 Churches are destroyed in Nigeria every year since 2009. This was the same year Boko Haram insurgents began their murderous campaign aimed at installing a caliphate across the Sahel. The report said a total of 19,100 Churches have been attacked in the last 16 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chairman of Catholic-inspired Intersociety, Emeka Umeagbalasi, outlined the complex religious landscape in Africa\u2019s most populous country: Northern Nigeria, he said, has 40 million Christians \u2013 although this total included 3 million traditional worshippers, many former Christians with Christian names \u2013 while the South has 70 million indigenous Christians, among whom 10 million practice traditional religions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nigeria is also home to an estimated 100 million Muslims-\u2014 76 million in the North and 24 million in the South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRazing 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,\u201d Umeagbalasi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In comments to Crux, Umeagbalasi explained how his organization came about the numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we did was to look at the number of churches that were attacked, including those destroyed or shut down. Because a church cannot just force itself down. Something violent must have happened for that church to be deserted or to be shut down. So what we did was to look at the number of churches that was shut down in the past 16 years. And we got it at approximately 19, 100,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo after dividing the 19,100 into 16, it gave us approximately 1,200 per year, 100 per month and more than 3 per day,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report adds fodder to the existential threat Christianity faces in Nigeria, especially given past reporting by Intersociety that has generally been corroborated by NGOs such as Aid to the Church in Need, International Christian Concern and Open Doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On August 10, Intersociety reported that at least 7,087 Christians were massacred across Nigeria in the first 220 days of 2025\u2014an average of 32 Christians killed per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2009, approximately 185,009 Nigerians have been killed, including 125,009 Christians and 60,000 \u201cliberal Muslims\u201d according to data from Intersociety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also stated that 7,899 others were abducted for being Christian. According to Umeagbalasi, the killings and abductions are driven by some 22 jihadist groups that have made the West African nation their home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told Crux<\/em> that these statistics are indicative of \u201cthe danger inherent in practicing Christianity in Nigeria \u2026 It also lends credence to our position that unless something serious and urgent is done, there will be no traces of Christianity in Nigeria in the next 50 to 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said Nigeria wouldn\u2019t however be the first country in which Christianity had been wiped out. He cited today\u2019s Turkey as a prime example. Anatolia was the heartland of the Byzantine Empire, the dominant Christian power in the Eastern Mediterranean for centuries. It contained countless churches, cathedrals, and monasteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But starting in the 14th century, the Ottomans launched what Umeagbalasi describes as a \u201cJihad war\u201d against the Byzantines. It let to the capture of Constantinople \u2013 now Istanbul \u2013 in 1453, and proceeded to convert Byzantine churches into mosques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the same thing in Asyut, Egypt where an AD 641 Arab conquest resulted in the repurposing of some Christian churches. Umeagbalasi said the Muslim Brotherhood and other jihadist groups later launched \u201ccoordinated and systematic attacks on those that profess Christianity, especially the Coptic Christians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday, if you go to Asyut, it\u2019s not only that many Christians from that area have fled the country and settled in different parts of the world, like  Europe and America, but also the tens of thousands have been forced into being converted to Islam. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands have been forcibly converted to Islam and thousands killed in the past 20-30 years,\u201d he told Crux<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the same pattern of Muslims taking over Christian communities is being repeated in Nigeria-the African country with the largest number of Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can understand why all these jihadist groups have relocated to Nigeria and the jihadists have also risen to state power in Nigeria,\u201d Umeagbalasi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the attack on Christianity in Nigeria is being facilitated by the State, noting, perhaps with some level of exaggeration, that \u201cthe only project in Nigeria is not to govern Nigeria, it\u2019s not even to fix Nigeria, but to force all citizens of the country into radical Islamism. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. weigh legislative response<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the situation of Christians in Nigeria grows more precarious, a U.S. senator has introduced legislation designed to keep Christians safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025 was introduced September 11 by Texas Senator Ted Cruz. It requires that the Secretary of State designates the Federal Republic of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, as well as keep Islamist terrorist groups Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa designated as entities of particular concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNigerian Christians are being targeted and executed for their faith by Islamist terrorist groups, and are being forced to submit to sharia law and blasphemy laws across Nigeria,\u201d Cruz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is long past time to impose real costs on the Nigerian officials who facilitate these activities and my Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act uses new and existing tools to do exactly that. I urge my colleagues to advance this critical legislation expeditiously,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umeagbalasi has welcomed the legislation saying it was \u201ca morale booster\u201d to all those fighting to keep Nigeria\u2019s Christians safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YAOUND\u00c9, Cameroon \u2013 A new report by has revealed that a hundred churches are destroyed in the African nation of Nigeria every month. The attacks are carried out by several jihadist organizations including Boko Haram insurgents and Fulani Herdsmen. The report from the Nigeria based NGO \u2013 International society for Civil Liberties and the Rule […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":18929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-international","category-naija-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-37-e1758174248694.png?fit=550%2C347&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18930,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18928\/revisions\/18930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}