Details of a massacre of dozens of Christians in the restive Middle Belt of Nigeria, believed to have occurred at the hands of genocidal Fulani jihadists, began surfacing over the weekend as the nation marks the holiest season in Christianity and the anniversary of one of the most abhorrent acts of Islamic terrorism in the nation’s modern history.
On April 14, 2014, the jihadist terrorist organization Boko Haram abducted nearly 300 schoolgirls from the Christian community of Chibok in northern Borno State, taking them as slaves with little meaningful government action in response. Eleven years later, over 90 of the girls remain missing, many indoctrinated into jihadist ideology and forced to raise the children resulting from their systematic rape by the radical Islamist group.
The Nigerian newspaper Leadership, lamenting the government’s inaction to save the girls, reported that as of Monday, 96 girls remain missing — somehow five more than the 91 reported on the ten-year anniversary of the abductions in 2024. Multiple rounds of attempted rescues, some successful, have occurred throughout the past decade, though most of the girls not rescued managed to save themselves either on the day of the abduction or some as recently as seven years after their kidnapping. The terrorists spent years publishing videos showing the Christian girls shrouded in Islamic veils, claiming to have converted and urging others to do so.
Several Nigerian officials marked the anniversary with an event in London on Monday alongside the United Nations, highlighting the continued threat of radical Islamic terrorism in the country by the girls’ absence. The event will reportedly feature a photo exhibition honoring the missing girls and remarks from advocates for their release.
“This event is more than remembrance,” the Murtala Muhammed Foundation (MMF), a Nigerian humanitarian group, said in a statement. “It’s a clarion call to reignite global outrage, to pursue justice without compromise, and to restore dignity and opportunity to girls and women scarred by war.”
In an article on the anniversary on Monday, Leadership lamented that the Chibok abduction created a “new normal” for Nigerian Christians as subsequent mass abductions continued, turning girls into sex slaves and forcing them to raise the resulting children as soldiers for the cause. The Nigerian newspaper Punch similarly concluded that the Nigerian government had all but forgotten the girls, asking, “Does the government know or care?”
“This is a blight on the government and the security agencies, including the self-styled Department of State Services. The government has failed in its core responsibility to secure the citizens,” the newspaper condemned. “As long as one citizen is in captivity, so long is the country in captivity.”
Boko Haram, an Islamic State affiliate, remains a threat in the north of the country. In the central Middle Belt — where the majority-Christian south of the nation meets the majority-Muslim north — the radical jihadists commonly referred to as “Fulani herdsmen” have waged an ongoing campaign to erase the indigenous Christian populations of the region with little government resistance. The Fulanis’ attacks intensified significantly under former President Muhammadu Buhari, himself an ethnic Fulani whose government promoted the myth that Christian massacres were fueled by climate change.
Fulani attacks — often featuring mass rape, the burning down of churches and homes, and machete massacres — have continued unabated under Buhari’s hand-picked successor Bola Tinubu. Multiple attacks have been documented in the past two weeks as Christians have prepared for Holy Week, the period marking the end of Lent and preceding the holiest holiday of Easter.
Citing local officials, the Christian outlet Morning Star News documented a massacre on April 7 killing nine Christians in an ambush apparently intended to scare Christians out of living in their indigenous communities. The incident occurred in Plateau State, in the heart of the nation’s inland where Fulanis have increasingly stolen land from Christians over the past decade. Shortly before that on April 2 and 3, local Christians reported a separate attack that killed over 60 people in the state targeting seven different villages. One village, Hurti, reportedly lost over 40 of its residents. Christian Daily International reported that, in addition to those killed, over 1,000 lost their homes. One local described gangs of Fulani jihadists on motorcycles storming Hurti village, burning down hundreds of homes and slaughtering locals.
Youth leader Joseph Chudu Yonkpa told Morning Star that the threat is constant for Christians attempting to live on their ancestral lands.
“The atrocities committed by Fulani militias against Christians here extends beyond ambushes and attacks, as their cattle have been grazing on our farms with impunity, rendering countless families jobless and hungry as their only source of livelihood is destroyed,” he explained. “The continued killings and destruction of our Christians’ means of livelihood are deliberate attempts to turn our Christian communities into a lawless one.”
Preceding these two attacks, the Nigerian newspaper Punch reported another 52 people were killed in a suspected Fulani attack on March 28.
The governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang, denounced the killings in remarks this week as an attempted genocide against his Christian constituents instigated by unknown organizers.
“I can tell you in all honesty that I cannot find any explanation other than genocide sponsored by terrorists,” he said in an interview with Nigeria’s Channels Television, according to Punch.
“The question is, who are the persons behind the organisers of this terrorism?” he asked. “We must come to the point where we know the sponsors because it is not just the work of ordinary people.”
“This is being sponsored from somewhere, and I am sure that in the coming days, the security agencies will work together, not at cross-purposes but in unison, to be able to bring out the requisite intelligence that will help us to put this matter behind us,” he promised.
On Sunday, Mutfwang visited one of the villages most devastated by the jihadist killings, the town of Bokkos. While speaking firmly against the Fulani jihadists in some interviews, his remarks to the people were limited to platitudes about “rising up to the occasion” and promises to improve mobile phone and internet reception in the area.
“This attack is to keep you in poverty. This attack is to enslave your minds, to become slaves in your own land,” he told the victims. “I want to watch the youth of this village to rise up to the occasion. The youth of any community are the strength of the community and it is time for us to put aside our differences… live as one people.”
