Islamist Wickedness in Nigeria.

Over 7K Christians killed in Nigeria so far in 2025: watchdog.

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, August 13, 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

Islamic extremists and radicalized herder militias have killed over 7,000 Christians within the first 220 days of 2025, a new report from a civil society organization estimates, as human rights advocates continue to criticize the Nigerian government's inability to protect Christians. 

The Anambra-based International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), headed by Christian criminologist and researcher Emeka Umeagbalasi, reported that at least 7,087 Christians "were massacred across Nigeria" from Jan. 1 until Aug. 10.

During that time, "no fewer than 7,800 others were violently seized and abducted for being Christians," the report estimates. The organization relies on what it deems to be credible local and foreign media reports, government accounts, reports from international rights groups and eyewitness accounts to compile statistical data. 

"The brutal massacre of an estimated 7,087 Christians and abduction of 7,800 others also translated to an average of 30 Christian deaths per day and more than one per hour," Intersociety's report reads. "An estimated 35 Christians are also calculated to have been abducted daily and roughly two others per hour, in the said past 220 days or seven months and ten days of 2025."

Tens of thousands of Nigerian Christians have been killed in the last decade, and many others have been displaced amid the rise of Islamic extremist groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State in the northeast and the increase of attacks carried out by radicalized Fulani militias against predominantly Christian communities in the Middle Belt states. CP.