by Pastor Sam Jones
The Nigerian government does not deny that Christians are being killed.
It denies where it is happening—and who is responsible.
By confining its public narrative to the North East and North West and blaming terrorist groups like Boko Haram or Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), the Nigerian government presents the violence as a distant insurgency problem—tragic, complex, but contained.
That narrative collapses in the Middle Belt.
In states like Benue, Plateau, southern Kaduna, and Nasarawa, Christian farming communities are being attacked with relentless regularity. Villages are emptied overnight. Churches are burned. Survivors flee—and do not return.
This is not theoretical. It has names, dates, and graves.
On June 13–14, 2025, more than 200 Christians were murdered for their faith as armed Fulani ethnic militia descended on the Christian community of Yelewata in Benue State. Families were locked inside market stalls, doused with gasoline, and burned alive. It was one of the deadliest single assaults in Nigeria’s ongoing wave of Christian persecution.
What makes Yelewata impossible to dismiss is not only the brutality—but the warning.
A Department of State Security intelligence memo dated May 13, 2025 explicitly warned of a planned attack. A Nigerian military base with approximately 30 soldiers was stationed nearby. And yet, no intervention came. Soldiers did not act. Military forces arrived more than five hours after the attackers had fled.
In the aftermath, survivors and local journalists report that officials fabricated a diversionary narrative to conceal military negligence—and that residents were pressured to repeat it under threat of reprisal.
This was not an unforeseen tragedy. It was a warned-of massacre, followed by denial.
Nor was it isolated.
On Sunday morning, January 18, 2026 armed attackers stormed three churches in Kaduna State during worship services and abducted at least 160 Christians. Worshippers were taken mid-service, marched into nearby forests, and forced toward known terrorist enclaves.
Again, the warning existed.
One week earlier, TruthNigeria issued a terror alert identifying the Kurmin Wali corridor as facing imminent danger. The area lies within miles of long-established hostage camps operated by Fulani ethnic militias and allied jihadist groups—camps documented for years through survivor testimony, video interviews, and geolocation data.
The threat was known.
The terrain was mapped.
The pattern was established.
Yet when the kidnappings occurred—one of the largest mass church abductions in Kaduna’s history—the government did not respond with urgency. It responded with denial.
For two days, local authorities insisted no mass kidnapping had occurred. Families searched for loved ones while officials rejected the reports outright. Only after detailed documentation was published did the government acknowledge the abductions.
That sequence matters.
Because it reveals a pattern: warnings ignored, attacks denied, language softened, perpetrators left untouched—and then quiet normalization.
The Middle Belt violence does not resemble classic hit-and-run terrorism. Boko Haram and ISWAP seek ideological spectacle and attention. What is happening in the Middle Belt is quieter and far more effective.
Armed Fulani militias attack Christian villages at night. Homes and churches are burned. Residents are killed or driven off. The land is then occupied. Displacement is permanent.
Terrorism often seeks fear.
Genocide and Jihad seek territory.
And when such violence is repeated, predictable, and unpunished, it ceases to be mere security failure. It becomes policy by permission.
No one needs to claim that all Fulani are responsible. That is a distraction. The issue is that armed Fulani ethnic militias exist, operate openly, and enjoy near-total impunity—while their victims are Christians.
The refusal to name this reality is not neutrality. It is participation.
Nigeria is now the deadliest country in the world to be a Christian. Governments are judged not only by what they prevent, but by what they permit—and by what they refuse to acknowledge. The Nigerian government is permitting systematic attacks in the Middle Belt of their country by refusing to protect their Christian citizens that live there.
By pretending the Middle Belt is a secondary concern, Nigeria’s government minimizes international scrutiny and avoids hard questions about internal accountability. But the cost of that pretense is paid in Christian blood.
Villages are not “hotspots.” People are not “collateral.” And land seizures disguised as communal conflict are not accidents.
The Middle Belt is burning. And every attempt to look away ensures that it will continue.
Pastor Sam is the author of 5 Steps to Kill a Nation. He is also a co-author of Social Injustice, Church and State, and Enemies Within the Church Bible Study.
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