Nearly 10K Nigerian Christians slaughtered in 2 years; thousands abducted or assaulted: report

Michie · Jan 11, 2025

This image grab made from an AFPTV video taken in Maiyanga village, in Bokkos local government, on December 27, 2023, shows families burying in a mass grave their relatives killed in deadly attacks conducted by armed groups in Nigeria's central Plateau State. The death toll from a series of attacks on villages in central Nigeria has climbed to almost 200, local authorities said on December 27, 2023, as survivors began to bury the dead. Armed groups launched attacks between December 23, 2023, and December 26, 2023, in Nigeria's Plateau State, a region plagued for several years by religious and ethnic tensions. | KIM MASARA/AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images

Boko Haram militants shot Suzanne in the head as the Christian woman attended a field, murdering her father and robbing her of eyesight in an attack that exemplified the persistent violence impacting Nigerian people of faith in the last several years.

Nearly 10,000 Nigerian Christians (9,814) died at the hands of Boko Haram and other Islamic extremist groups between November 2022 and November 2024, according to the newly released 2025 Global Christian Relief Red List. The data for the Red List comes from the Violent Incidents Database maintained by GCR, a U.S.-based nonprofit monitoring Christian persecution worldwide.

Suzanne’s story, featured in the report, included a prayer for Christians in Nigeria, which advocates have warned for yearshave faced genocidal violence in a country marred by Islamic extremism, ethnic violence and crime.

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