More than 20,000 Christians have reportedly been brutally killed over the past decade across south-east Nigeria, according to a disturbing report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), a Catholic-inspired human rights organisation.
The report accuses various jihadist factions such as Fulani bandits, Muslim vigilantes and jihadist herdsmen, Niger Delta militants and even Nigerian military forces of carrying out the killings, largely targeting Christian and ethnic communities in the region.
Emeka Umeagbalasi, the Board Chair for Intersociety, the organisation behind the report, states that roughly 9,800 deaths since June 2015 were jihad-related, attributing the violence to extremist elements who intensified their presence in the south east under the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari.
A further 10,500 non-combatant civilians were allegedly killed by members of the Nigerian Armed Forces, with the victims apparently targeted for their religion and ethnicity.
Beyond the mass killings, the report highlights systematic abuses against the region’s civilian population – Christians and traditional worshippers alike.
These include false accusations and unjust detentions.
The report also delivers a critical indictment of the governors of Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi, and Imo States, charging them of “graveyard silence” amid the widespread violence.
Intersociety claims the governors have either passively condoned or actively cooperated with state and external actors to suppress the region’s Christian and ethnic identities.
The killings and assaults, which reportedly surged from 2020 onward, have reached into many of the 78 Local Government Areas across the four states.
In particular, traditional religious practitioners have faced severe repression, with the government purportedly attacking what Intersociety describes as Christianity’s cultural and religious origins in Igbo land.
According to the report, jihadist activities are not only underreported but sometimes deliberately covered up.
It also raises alarm over land acquisitions across the region supposedly made by third parties acting on behalf of jihadist groups - some presumably with links to state or federal government actors.
“The totality of the above has endangered lives and properties and threatened their defenceless peoples’ fundamental human rights to ethnic and religious identities, including rights to be born, develop and live in a secured and protected environment,” the report said.
Intersociety is calling on the international community to impose travel bans on the governors of the four affected states.
The report reads, “We also make bold to say that those who aid, abet, promote, fund, and perpetrate international religious freedom abuses in Nigeria must no longer be given a pass—regardless of the disguises they wear.”
In a final appeal, Intersociety called on the government of the US to reinstate Nigeria on its list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) and classify the Fulani jihadist herdsmen as an Entity of Particular Concern, citing their ongoing attacks on Christian communities.
