“When the Fulanis attacked our village of Yelwata, they slaughtered three of my sons. The youngest, who is lying here, had his hand cut off and his back slashed. My daughter was severely burned. My husband was hacked to pieces and set ablaze in our bedroom.”
That is how Felicia David described her horrific ordeal to Truth Nigeria, recounting the Yelwata massacre of June 13 and 14, in which 200 Christians were killed.
Yelwata, a farming village about 4.5 miles north of Makurdi in Benue state, has a population that is 98% Christian—about 95% Catholic, with 3% from other denominations. The village also served as a settlement for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who had fled earlier Fulani militia attacks in neighboring areas.
Fulani Jihadists struck the town of Yelwata with chilling coordination. Three groups converged from different directions, firing guns and creating chaos. Witnesses saw over 40 gunmen on motorcycles, in pairs, shouting “Allahu Akbar” as they attacked civilians, set homes on fire, and killed without discrimination.
“They surrounded Yelwata… and began slaughtering people—mostly women, children, and displaced families who thought they had found safety here,” said local youth leader Mton Matthias. The police and soldiers on site were overwhelmed.
Although the Yelwata massacre may represent one of the largest recent incidents of Christian killings in Nigeria, such events are a grim and common occurrence across the country.
At least 85 Christians lost their lives in coordinated attacks throughout Benue State between late May and early June.
This period saw escalating violence, including attacks on June 1 in Gwer West and Apa counties, resulting in 43 deaths. Further attacks in Gwer West days earlier had already caused 42 fatalities and displaced hundreds of residents.
These attacks followed the abduction of 14 women near Owukpa on May 28. The women, passengers on a bus from Enugu, remain unaccounted for.
The gravity of the situation is underscored by broader statistics. International Christian Concern reported at least 300 Christians were massacred in the first quarter of 2025, with dozens abducted and thousands displaced.
A 2023 report by Intersociety (International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law) highlighted that since 2009, over 50,000 Christians have been killed, and 18,000 churches and 2,200 schools destroyed. The report also noted the deaths of approximately 34,000 moderate Muslims in Islamist attacks during the same timeframe.
On an annual basis, the death toll remains high. According to Global Christian Relief, an average of 4,000 Christians are killed in Nigeria every year. This figure exceeds global averages and supports claims that Nigeria accounts for nine out of every ten Christians martyred worldwide.
Initially localized in the north where twelve states declared Sharia Law in 1999, the killing of Christians in Nigeria has since spread to the Middle Belt and further southwards, as other terrorist groups such as Fulani Jihadist herdsmen and Islamic State West Africa Province, ISWAP emerged.
With violence against Christians in Nigeria intensifying, serious accusations of complicity have been leveled against the nation’s security forces. Observers suggest that the military’s failure to intervene effectively amounts to either tacit approval or direct involvement in the killings.
Emeka Umeagbalasi articulated this view in comments to CWR, stating that Nigeria effectively has “a Jihadist military” with the same mission as the Jihadist Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram, ISWAP, and other terrorist organizations carrying out genocide against Christians.
He asserted that the security forces’ complicity manifests either through their passive inaction or through active participation in the violence targeting Christians.
Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch and Chairman of the Alliance against Genocide, has also condemned the military’s inaction and alleged complicity in the ongoing genocide against Christians.
“The Army’s complicity is clear—either cattle-owning generals are being paid off, or they are too corrupt and cowardly to act,” Stanton declared.
“The UN Human Rights Council must appoint an international commission of inquiry, and complicit generals should face demotion and prosecution,” he added.
Growing desperate due to continued attacks, Nigerian church leaders and organizations are advising Christians to devise ways to defend themselves, blaming either governmental failure or deliberate inaction in protecting them.
A statement from the “Joint Christian Body against Insecurity in Nigeria,” signed by its President, Nwankwo Tony Nwaezeigwe, captured this sentiment with the stark declaration: “Enough is enough.”
The statement not only calls for Christians to rise up and protect themselves, but also underscores the severity of the situation by asserting that “the life of a Christian is no longer the worth of a Fulani cow.” Increasingly, the perception is growing that the current federal and state governments are “shamelessly supportive” of the “senseless and gruesome killing of innocent Christians and their kidnapping for ransoms.”
The statement also urged Christians to deal with “these hordes of Muslim criminals masquerading as Fulani Herdsmen, Bandits, Boko Haram and ISWAP Islamic insurgents.”
The statement stopped short of an explicit call to violence, but its references hinted strongly at the possibility, including biblical references and remarks by world leaders.
A key biblical reference was Luke 22:35-36, interpreted as Christ instructing followers to ensure they have means to defend themselves, even telling some to “sell their wares and ‘buy a sword.'”
Emphasizing the urgency, the statement lamented, “We have been standing akimbo and helpless like vultures beaten by heavy downpour as our Saints and patriots are kidnapped and slaughtered without any culprit brought before the court of law for trial. The question before us is for how long we shall continue to wait and watch as our people are being slaughtered unceasingly?”
Responding to a direct question from CWR about resorting to violence, Nwankwo Tony Nwaezeigwe drew on the story of Peter cutting off an ear during Christ’s trial.
He stated, “It’s obvious that the Apostles were armed,” suggesting Christians should be prepared to defend themselves.
Nwaezeigwe ultimately affirmed: “My position therefore is that Nigerian Christians should rise up and defend themselves.”
Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of the Abuja Archdiocese echoed this view. In an interview with ACI Africa on April 13, he framed self-defense as a matter of “natural justice” necessary to protect oneself from “bloodthirsty criminals.”
He stated that one cannot simply wait when their family is threatened, emphasizing that Christians “must rise up” and protect themselves and their communities.
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Somewhere in my readings I found this: “A man of peace still has the liberty to surrender his throat to that of a murderer, but not the throats of his wife and children.”
Four points and a Question:
FIRST, the overall question is whether the nation-state idiom can always be grafted onto populations divided into pre-“modern” communal groups? This is the premise of Western political sociology, based on parts of anomalous (?) Western history—combined with evolutionary Darwinism and the convenient ideologies of economic and political “development.”
SECOND, for Nigeria, the middle case has been the introduction of Sharia Law mostly into the northern provinces, but not all of Nigeria. The result is as reported in the above article. The parallel question in the 19th-century United States was whether a nation can survive half slave and half free.
THIRD, “Nation”? The nationalities—that is, the pre-Western communal groups—in Nigeria and other parts of the world are not only cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and localist, but also tribal and divided by partly incompatible religions. About the religions, St. Paul still credited a role for universal and inborn natural law…. “When the Gentiles who have no law do by nature what the Law prescribes, these having no law are a law unto themselves. They show the work of the Law written in their hearts” (Rom 2:14-15).
FOURTH, “hearts?” How far does vague “fraternity” go when the Qur’an—unlike the New Testament and Christianity—too often redefines the natural law into instinctively fideistic and militant jihad as we now see especially in Nigeria? “Allahu Akbar!”
QUESTION: What does it mean when the regnant “religion” of Secular Humanism classifies Christianity as just another pre-modern identity to be dissolved by “modernity”? And then wanders amnesiac into the rest of the world with little more to sell than political and economic progressivism? And, now, instead of Allah, AI?
At the local and global scales, how, exactly, should the Church propose (not impose) the historicity of the Incarnation and, therefore, the coherence of faith and reason? “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8).
At least this article calls them Fulani Jihadist herdsmen.
Twelve states in the north declared Sharia law in 1999.
The religion of peace.
Lord help us.
Makes sense to me.
What can American Catholics and other Christians, along with others who sympathize with the Nigerian Christians and other innocent Nigerians who are being attacked and killed (e.g., various African American groups advocating for the rights and dignity of Black and Brown peoples), do to help from afar?