7,000 Nigerian Christians killed in 2025, watchdog reports

Radical Muslims massacred 7,087 Christian Nigerians throughout the first seven months of 2025, according to a report from the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law. The watchdog group known as Intersociety is based in southeast Nigeria. Led by criminal researcher Emeka Umeagbalasi, the group reported Sunday that an additional 7,800 Christians were kidnapped within the same period. Statistically, about 30 Christians were killed each day over the last 220 days, and about 35 were kidnapped each day.

Is this a sudden rise in violence? Christians have long faced violent persecution in the West African country. Global Christian Relief reports that at least 4,000 Christians in Nigeria are killed by extremists each year. Another Christian aid group, Open Doors, counted 3,100 killed and 2,830 abducted in Nigeria over 12 months ending in September 2024. During the previous year, 4,118 were killed and 3,300 abducted, according to Open Doors’ most recent report on persecution in the country.

Intersociety attributed the recent spike in Christian massacres to the rising number of unchecked jihadist Islamic terror groups, specifically radical groups of herdsmen and bandits. Nigeria harbors no less than 22 budding or full-grown Islamic terror groups that seek to wipe out the country’s estimated 112 million Christians, the report said.

Radical groups have launched a number of violent attacks against Nigerian residents in recent years:

• On June 13 this year, up to 200 Christians were reportedly killed in an attack on Yelwata, Nigeria.

• Armed gang members kidnapped hundreds of central Nigerian students at gunpoint in March 2024. Weeks later, over 100 locals were forcibly kidnapped from their homes in northwest Nigeria.

• Gunmen attacked and burned over a dozen central Nigerian communities in December 2023, leaving at least 140 people dead.

• Dozens of worshipers were killed when terrorists attacked a Catholic church in southwestern Nigeria in June 2022.

Intersociety further reported that thousands of moderate and unarmed Muslims have been killed or kidnapped by radical insurgents of the same faith. The Muslim-on-Muslim attacks are contained in the country’s northern states and fueled by centuries-old ethnic and intertribal rivalries, the report continued.

Dig deeper: Listen to Onize Oduah’s report on The World and Everything in It about a Nigerian massacre by extremist herdsmen earlier this year.