30,000 Christians killed in Nigeria over six years – study
The authors of the ORFA report state that Christians in the country are killed 4.4 times more often than Muslims.
Nearly 30,000 Christians have fallen victim to violence in Nigeria over the past six years. This is stated in a new report by the African organization Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), dedicated to analyzing killings and abductions of civilians between October 2019 and September 2025, according to Christian Today.
According to the study, 28,551 Christians and 13,224 Muslims were killed during the reporting period. Taking into account the size of religious communities in the affected regions, the mortality rate among Christians was approximately 4.4 times higher than among Muslims. In total, 79,323 people died in the country over six years, of whom more than 42,000 were civilians.
The report's authors attribute the majority of attacks to armed groups of radicalized Fulani herders, who are credited with 44% of all civilian killings. The report also notes that Christian farming communities are particularly frequent targets of attacks involving killings, abductions, sexual violence, and the destruction of homes.
ORFA also recorded 34,773 cases of abduction. According to the researchers, Christian hostages are often subjected to harsher treatment, higher ransoms are demanded for their release, and Christian women and girls are more frequently subjected to forced religious conversion, sexual violence, and forced marriage.
Based on the findings, the authors called on the international community to pay greater attention to the protection of religious freedom in Nigeria, to increase pressure on the country's authorities to curb violence and combat impunity for perpetrators, and to expand assistance to victims of religiously motivated attacks.
As the Union of Orthodox Journalists reported, on June 22, Fulani Islamists attacked the village of Kawel in the Bokkos district of Plateau State in Nigeria and killed 28 Christians, including Pastor Marcus Nyam.
