Catholic leaders in Nigeria debate impact of ISIS strikes on 2027 presidential election

Two distinguished Church leaders in Nigeria have offered contrasting interpretations of the impact of the U.S. strikes targeting ISIS in Nigeria on Christmas Day 2025.

On December 25, 2025, the people of Sokoto State in northwestern Nigeria woke up to the sound of bombs. The U.S. had carried out air strikes against what were said to be ISIS targets in the area.

President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to celebrate the strikes, which he described as “a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS [ISIL] terrorist scum.”

“ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians,” Trump wrote, was hit with “numerous perfect strikes.”

Mr. Trump promised “many more” strikes if the Nigerian government failed to take steps to address the problem of Christian killings in the country. He reaffirmed his conviction that the US “will not allow radical Islamic terrorism to prosper”.

Scant information about the impact of the strikes has filtered out, except for the Africa Command branch of the U.S. military saying the same day that its “initial assessment is that multiple Isis terrorists were killed in the Isis camps,” as a result of the strikes.

Differing perspectives

One month after those strikes were carried out, two leading Catholics in Nigeria spoke positively of the strikes, but offered different views of their impact.

Father Patrick Alumuku, Director of Catholic Television of Nigeria, told CWR that U.S. strikes were “a providential and decisive turning point,” directly crediting them with improved security for Nigeria’s Christians.

“We thank Donald Trump for what he has done,” he said, pointing out that “for the first time in 15 years, no church was attacked this past Christmas in 2025.”

Conversely, Emeka Umeagbalasi, Director of the Catholic-inspired NGO, International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, Intersociety, argues the intervention has only prompted superficial changes from a government he describes as “complicit in the persecution of Christians.”

While telling CWR that “Trump’s pressure, international pressure, is working,” he contends it is merely forcing the leadership [of Nigeria] to engage in a “camouflage” to appease the world.

He remains deeply skeptical of any real impact, stating that “as for having an impact in terms of safety of Christians, I don’t think so,” and warns that “Islamisation is going on” and “genocide against Christians has continued to be intensified.”

The matter of presidential tickets

The two men also reflected on the 2027 Nigerian presidential election, particularly as to who will be on the ballot.

The debate stems from a widespread suspicion that the current administration, led by President Bola Tinubu and his Muslim vice president, Kashim Shettima, has exacerbated religious tensions and fueled persecution against Christians. The push for a balanced ticket is seen by many as a necessary step to restore national unity and ensure the safety of Christian communities.

Fr. Alumuku offered a theological perspective, telling CWR that the Muslim-Muslim ticket was allowed to happen to reveal a deeper truth.

“I think that the political calculation was providential. I say this because the Muslims in Nigeria have always thought that they can rule the country, and the jihadism we are seeing is actually part of that. But you see, God had planned that they should have a Muslim-Muslim ticket so that it would end in shambles, and they will know that they have no capacity to run this country, Nigeria, as a Muslim country,” Alumuku told CWR.

The priest pointed to the government’s inability to curb terrorism and the resulting international outcry as evidence of this failure. “The whole world knows that there is persecution in Nigeria,” he said.

“Many Christians have been killed, priests, nuns, many members of the laity have been killed. Now, the whole world knows that there is persecution in Nigeria. And so, God has proven that he is God. Now, they know that nobody wants a Muslim-Muslim leadership in this country. It cannot work. “

The priest views the potential selection of a Christian vice president from the Middle Belt as a positive, if long overdue, development.

“Right now, they are looking for a vice president from the Middle Belt [of Nigeria]. I think this is, again, providential, because the people who are Christians in the northern part of Nigeria, who were ever considered for high positions of authority, are now being looked at for the possibility of providing leadership in this country.”

Questions about intentions

Umeagbalasi presents a different, more historically-rooted analysis. He contends the Muslim-Muslim ticket was not a miscalculation but the culmination of a “deliberately plotted … jihadist arrangement” that began under the previous Buhari administration in 2015.

“Tinubu inherited the presidency of the country based on jihadist arrangements. That one is an established fact,” Umeagbalasi claims. He traces the policy’s roots to Kaduna State, where Governor Nasir El-Rufai “abruptly abolished” a long-standing “Charter of Equity” that allocated key government positions between Christians and Muslims.

“Having thought that they had succeeded in Kaduna, the thing was experimented, and exported to the Centre,” he told CWR.

Umeagbalasi dismissed the current push for a Christian running mate as disingenuous. “It’s just a camouflage. It’s not being done with good intentions. Tinubu is being forced to do that,” he argued. “Their body language still registers this issue of Nigeria being Islamized… Everything is pretentious.” He warned that even if the ticket changes, established “Islamist and jihadi structures” and “militias” will continue to persecute Christians.

Both leaders agree that a simple change in the presidential ticket will not be enough to guarantee the safety of Christians. They said the protection of Nigeria’s Christians is a matter of political will.

“It is the government that is fanning the embers of Christian persecution in Nigeria,” Umeagbalasi told CWR.

 “It is the government that is harming these people, protecting the killers,” he asserted. Citing the recent abduction of 177 Christians in Kaduna, he accused local authorities of living in “perpetual denial” until the Christian Association of Nigeria forced their hand by publicizing the victims’ names.

 ”The root cause of the continuing massacres is the involvement of state actors in what can only be described as a campaign of Islamisation and genocide against the Christian population, a campaign they consistently deny,” Umeagbalasi told CWR.

Fr. Alumuku called on the government to “work harder, reposition its military and police to keep Christian communities safe,” noting that past administrations “never made any intentional effort” to do so.

For many Nigerian Christians, the debate and the election are not just about political representation, but about dismantling what they see as a systematic, state-sanctioned effort that threatens their very existence.

Persecution by the numbers

According to the Christian Association of Nigeria, nearly 175 worshippers were abducted from three churches in Kaduna state in Nigeria’s Middle Belt on January 18. As of January 20, between 163 to 167 were still held. And this has nothing to do with the 35 Christians killed in separate attacks in the country’s Middle Belt and eastern Nigeria within the same period. And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

The latest report by Release International—the U.K.-based charity that supports persecuted Christians worldwide—cites Intersociety data which show that in the first 2020 days of 2025, more than 7000 Christians were killed in Nigeria and hundreds more were kidnapped, tortured, or displaced.

Last June, at least 200 Christians were killed by jihadist Fulani herdsmen following attacks on Christian communities in Plateau State.

The UK-based charity said that last year, “Christians faced severe and escalating forms of persecution,” specifically in northern Nigeria. “This took the form mainly of attacks by Islamist militant groups such as Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Fulani herdsmen extremists.”

According to Intersociety’s updated report, faith-based violence in Nigeria claimed at least 185,000 lives between 2010 and October 2025, including 125,000 Christians. The report details a systematic campaign of destruction, with 19,100 churches burned to the ground and 1,100 entire Christian communities seized by alleged government-backed jihadist forces.

The crisis has also displaced an estimated 15 million people, predominantly Christians, and has specifically targeted spiritual leaders, with 600 clerics abducted and dozens killed or vanished.

What the future holds

So frightening are the figures that Release International is now warning that without “swift action” and an end to “global silence”, Christian “martyrdoms” in Nigeria may double in 2026. That grim warning has often been issued by  Umeagbalasi, who told CWR that if nothing is done, “Christianity could disappear altogether in Nigeria by 2075.”

While a Muslim-Christian ticket for the 2027 presidential election could symbolically signal a willingness to give Christians the same space on the table and therefore lower the temperature, it’s unlikely that a simple change in the presidential ticket will be enough to guarantee the safety of Christians.

“It’s a matter of political will,” said Fr. Alumuku. He urged the Nigerian government to “work harder, reposition its military and police to keep Christian communities safe.”

Umeagbalasi concurred, adding that the 2027 presidential election offers a crucial opportunity for a change in government or a new governmental structure that could effectively address the problem of Christian persecution in the country.