World Tour: Murdered by the thousands

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: persecution in Nigeria.

According to the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, Islamic militants killed more than 7,000 Christians in Nigeria in just the first seven months of 2025. During that same period, roughly the same number were kidnapped.

NICK EICHER, HOST: American Clint Lyons works with the nonprofit I-Reach to support persecuted Christians in Africa. He recently traveled to Nigeria—calling it the most deadly place in the world to follow Jesus.

WORLD Executive Producer Paul Butler spoke with him when he got back and we’ll hear a few minutes of that conversation on this week’s World Tour.

PAUL BUTLER: Well, let's start with Nigeria. What's going on there that makes it such a dangerous place to be a Christian?

CHRIS LYONS: Well, over these past few months, really these past couple of years to broaden it, we're seeing an increase, a dramatic uptick in the persecution of Christians. This is fueled by a lot of things. It's fueled by a need for land, scarcity of resources. But there's without a doubt a renewed fervor among Islamic militants to specifically target Christian villages and to take them out to steal their resources and their land. We've been really heavily involved in an area of Nigeria called Plateau State where, and I can tell you one very specific example where it was about 2 a.m. and more than a thousand of these militants, Fulani militants, came in. We're talking about well-resourced soldiers with trucks, with AK-47s going into these areas and shooting people at random. We're not talking about men, we're talking about men, women, and children who are being attacked by these militants.

And I had a chance to spend some time with one of the pastors in this region. He is a close relative who was killed in one of the attacks recently there but he just took me through what that night was like and what he saw was was just dreadful think of women just lying on the ground dead children lying on the ground dead and so such a senseless loss of life. You know, over two years we've seen a dramatic uptick in these attacks.

BUTLER: In a recent editorial, you called on the United States to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, also known as the CPC. This is under the International Religious Freedom Act. Why are you calling for that redesignation for the CPC? What will that accomplish?

LYONS: Right. Under the first Trump administration, Nigeria was designated as a Country of Particular Concern. And rightly so. Things were really bad then. With Fulani militants, with Boko Haram, with Islamic State of West Africa province going in and specifically attacking Christians. And so it received that designation. During the Biden administration, that designation was lifted. And we're calling upon Secretary Marco Rubio and President Trump to redesignate, reinstitute that designation.

And what that's going to do is put that country on alert. And I think it is a good first step. To now say, hey, you are on alert. There are things that are happening in your country against a particular religious group—talking about Christians here—that need to be addressed by your country, and that you're neglecting to address in the way that preserves human dignity and human rights.

BUTLER: So you're calling for a kind of state-to-state pressure or perhaps we might call that political pressure from the outside. But I know that you've just recently returned from a trip to Africa with the ministry that you lead. So what sort of things are you all doing inside the country to try to help the situation?

LYONS: We're going in and doing what we call reach outs. And reach outs are initiatives where we come in with food, basic necessities, and we resource people who have lost their homes, and we give them things that they just need to survive.

The idea is to go in and to figure out ways that we can serve this community, not just in the short term, but giving them long-term support as well. And that's where it becomes a real challenge because you have people who've lost everything. How do you then serve them long term? How do you help them thrive long term? And that's a real challenge. But to do that, we need the government involved. We need the Nigerian government involved. And what we're seeing right now is a kind of an unwillingness to go in and to really help in these areas. You know, I've heard stories from our contacts on the ground that these villages will be attacked and security forces are nearby and they won't go in because they're afraid. And so with that, that kind of mindset, it becomes really difficult to really serve and help these people long term when the government is, in my opinion, neglecting their responsibility toward their people.

BUTLER: How have you seen the church in Nigeria respond to this persecution?

LYONS: I think when you look at the landscape of the church in Nigeria, there is a real sense of community that you see when this happens. In these areas where you go in and you see devastated communities. You see fresh mass graves, you know, when you walk in. Our goal is to not just go in as a Western relief agency and help, but to mobilize the local church to help. And we're seeing some amazing things happen there.

I talked with one young lady who was part of our recent reach out in this area, and she was so encouraged by the believers there who had lost everything. Many of them lost their children, had lost spouses, had lost parents in these attacks and you see them coming together and saying we're going to be resilient, we're going to love one another, and really maybe even take the step of loving our enemies which is incredibly difficult to do if you think about that. But that's the mandate that Jesus gives us is to love our enemies. And so I personally have been very encouraged by the church's response there.

BUTLER: You know, the Scriptures tell us that when one believer suffers, the whole body suffers. So what can the church in the West do to encourage those in Nigeria who are experiencing such devastating loss and intense suffering for their faith?

LYONS: I think first is pray. Pray and specifically lift up these areas where these things are happening. Then find ways to get involved. Share your time, share your resources. And I would say secondly is, as you can, be involved politically, right? We're putting pressure on the State Department to make this CPC designation, to put Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. Speak to your local congressman, right? Email your local congressman and call. They have influence over the State Department. So you have a voice in this. You have a way to help. We're not helpless over here. There are things that we can do to stand with our brothers and sisters in Nigeria.

MAST: Paul Butler speaking with Clint Lyons, Executive Director of iREACH Global. That’s this week’s WORLD Tour.

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