Gunmen abducted 303 schoolchildren and 12 teachers from St. Mary’s School, a Catholic school in Niger State, according to a revised tally issued by the Christian Association of Nigeria. The update followed a verification process after authorities first reported 215 abducted students, with officials adding that 88 more children were captured while trying to escape.
The victims, boys and girls ages 10 to 18, were taken just days after 25 students were kidnapped in a similar attack in neighboring Kebbi State. No group has claimed responsibility. The abduction comes amid ongoing nationwide school kidnappings, limited early warning systems, and renewed attention on Nigeria as attacks continue against Christian communities.
The liberal mainstream media have included in their coverage a disclaimer that both Christians and Muslims are being targeted. However, this is technically true but misleading. While some sources claim most victims of jihadist groups are Muslim, the actual casualty data shows Christians are killed at dramatically disproportionate rates, roughly a 6.5 to 1 ratio compared to population distribution.
Since 2009, approximately 185,009 Nigerians have been killed, including 125,009 Christians and 60,000 “liberal Muslims.” The numbers clearly show that Christians are being disproportionately targeted.
A report by the Catholic-inspired group Intersociety says at least 7,087 Christians were massacred in Nigeria in the first 220 days of 2025, an average of 32 per day, with 7,899 others abducted by roughly 22 jihadist groups. The report claims these groups aim to eliminate more than 100 million Christians and to wipe out Christianity in Nigeria within 50 years, noting that since 2009 they have killed 125,009 Christians, destroyed 19,100 churches, displaced over 1,100 Christian communities, and abducted more than 600 clerics.
Benue State has suffered the worst of the violence, including the Yelewata massacre that killed an estimated 280 Christians between June 13 and 14, 2025, in the village of Yelwata. Another atrocity, the Sankera massacre, took place in April 2025 in the Sankera axis of Benue State, where more than 72 defenseless Christians were hacked to death. Church leaders describe these killings as systematic and escalating, and they accuse elements of the Nigerian military and political leadership of enabling jihadist violence while ignoring repeated pleas for protection.
In addition to the killings, the pattern of mass kidnappings in Nigeria is disturbing and has an extensive history. One of the most infamous cases occurred on April 14, 2014, when Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls from the Government Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State. Fifty-seven girls escaped immediately by jumping from the trucks as they were being transported. As of April 2024, ten years later, eighty-two of the Chibok girls were still missing and are presumed to remain in captivity, and roughly a third of the missing girls are believed to have died.
Between 2016 and 2017, 103 girls were released in small groups in exchange for prisoners. Many who refused forced marriages to Boko Haram fighters were subjected to sexual slavery, domestic servitude, or were used as suicide bombers.
Another major abduction occurred on February 19, 2018, when 110 schoolgirls aged eleven to nineteen were kidnapped from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State. Boko Haram returned 106 of them on March 21, 2018, including 104 students, a girl who did not attend the school, and a boy.
Five schoolgirls died on the day of the kidnapping. Leah Sharibu, a fourteen-year-old Christian, was not released because she refused to convert to Islam. According to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, she was later given to a Boko Haram fighter as a slave. When militants returned the other children, they warned the community: “Don’t ever put your daughters in school again.”
Other mass abductions have followed the same pattern. In 2020, 303 children were kidnapped from Government Science Secondary School Kankara in Katsina State. That same year, more than 500 boys were abducted, and seven days later, 344 were released after negotiations. In 2021, 317 schoolgirls were taken in Jangebe, Zamfara State. Between 2014 and 2024, more than 1,400 to 1,600 schoolchildren were abducted from Nigerian schools.
Nigerian security forces have been deployed and are combing the forests to rescue the abducted students. President Bola Tinubu cancelled his planned trip to the G20 summit in South Africa following the abductions. Human rights groups warn that the world’s indifference has left Christian communities devastated and increasingly forced to defend themselves.
In 2020, under President Trump, then–Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). The following year, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed Nigeria from the CPC list. Under the second Trump administration, Nigerian church leaders once again appealed directly to the president and testified before Congress.
Nigerian Catholic Bishop Wilfred Anagbe, from the heavily targeted Christian region of Benue, testified before the House Africa Subcommittee in March 2025. Only weeks later, Fulani militants attacked his home village of Aondoana and massacred twelve of his relatives along with scores of others.. Bishop Anagbe has continued to lobby in the United States, calling for pressure on the Nigerian government to act.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria has condemned the killings as “an affront to God, a stain on our shared humanity.” The bishops have staged peaceful rallies, and on March 3, 2025, they released a letter expressing deep concern that twelve northern states enforcing sharia law had ordered Catholic and other Christian schools to close for five weeks in forced observance of Ramadan.
President Trump redesignated Nigeria as a CPC on October 31, 2025. The next day, he announced that he had instructed the Defense Department to prepare for possible action in Nigeria, warning that if the Nigerian government continued to allow the killing of Christians, the United States would cut all aid and might intervene “guns-a-blazing” to wipe out the Islamic terrorists. Trump then directed Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia and Appropriations Chair Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma to immediately investigate and report back.
On November 1, 2025, one day after President Trump redesignated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern and the same day Trump publicly warned that the United States might intervene militarily, Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu stated on his official X account that the “characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality,” adding that “religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so.”
Three weeks later, Nigerian National Security Adviser Mallam Nuhu Ribadu arrived in Washington to lead a high-level delegation. A Pentagon official confirmed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Ribadu on Thursday, November 21, and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau met with the delegation the following day. The group also held meetings with members of Congress.
A senior State Department official described the delegation as “very high level” and noted that Nigeria’s CPC designation had “gotten the Nigerian officials’ attention.” Hegseth also spoke with Gen. Dagvin Anderson, the head of U.S. Africa Command, though it remains unclear if that conversation was directly related to Nigeria’s visit.
As these meetings unfolded, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz and rapper Nicki Minaj addressed the deadly threats faced by Christians in Nigeria during a UN event. On November 20, the House Foreign Affairs Africa Subcommittee held a hearing on the situation in Nigeria with senior State Department officials, focusing heavily on the CPC designation. Although reports did not list every member of the Nigerian delegation, they consistently described it as a senior government security team engaging at the highest levels of the Trump administration.
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