In Nigeria, Christians are being targeted

These may well be conflicts over the scramble for green pastures for livestock, with no religious motivation whatsoever; the fact remains that in Nigeria, Christians are killed 4.4 times more frequently than Muslims. This has been set out in black and white in a recently published study by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), which, having examined events in this vast sub-Saharan country between 2019 and September 2025, has concluded that the Islamic militias of the Fulani herders are responsible “for a death toll among civilians four times higher than that caused in total by the two main Islamic terrorist organisations, Boko Haram and the Islamic State’s West Africa Province”. Not only that: Fulani violence is the main factor responsible for the high number of casualties in Nigeria. Of all the casualties recorded (79,323, an average of thirty-six per day), 44 per cent are attributable to the Fulani.

A very clear situation – and not a recent one – which had, however, led several experts on Africa, some with a fair following within the Vatican and the media, to declare that there was no religious motive whatsoever, and that one would be in trouble just for thinking otherwise. It’s the fault of the climate going haywire: since those arid lands lack water and grass for the herds, people go and take it wherever they can find it, stealing it from others, who, purely by chance, happen to be mostly Christian. Collateral damage, in short. What was missing from the dominant narrative, however, were the raids on churches – often set alight – involving beheadings and kidnappings. Perhaps a bit too much, really, just to get water and land. The situation in sub-Saharan Africa is spiralling out of control: not only in Nigeria and Burkina Faso, but also further south, in Mozambique, where the toll of Islamist raids, deaths and abductions is rising by the day. All amidst the utter silence of a distracted West.