Report Estimates 4,216 Christians Killed in Nigeria Since January

A new report from the U.S.-based aid agency Equipping The Persecuted (ETP) indicates that 4,216 Christians were killed in Nigeria between January 1 and September 8, 2026. This figure averages to approximately one death every 86 minutes. The report, titled "Crisis in the Middle Belt: Religious Persecution and Security Failure in Nigeria," highlights that the majority of these fatalities occurred in the Middle Belt region.

ETP researchers argue that while Nigeria faces various forms of communal and resource-based violence, the attacks on Christian farming communities are largely religiously motivated and executed by organized militant networks. The study notes that Fulani actors are responsible for more of these deaths than Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) combined. The authors caution that framing these incidents solely as farmer-herder clashes or generalized rural violence obscures the systematic nature of the persecution, which often involves the destruction of churches and the forced displacement of entire villages.