Wayne Lumbasi
Across Nigeria’s Middle Belt, an invisible war is raging. It is not fought with declarations or on battlefields, but in quiet villages where Christians are being hunted, displaced, and erased. What is happening is more than communal violence. It is what many local leaders and international observers now call a silent genocide. A calculated campaign of terror that targets believers for their faith.
In Benue State, the Yelwata massacre in June 2025 shocked the nation. Armed men stormed the village at night, setting homes ablaze and killing more than one hundred residents, most of them Christians. Families were trapped in their houses and burned alive. The attackers vanished before dawn, leaving behind charred remains and haunting silence. Similar horrors have unfolded in Plateau and Southern Kaduna, where Christian communities have been repeatedly attacked while local authorities struggle, or refuse, to respond.
Human rights organizations report that more than ten thousand Christians have been killed in the past two years. Villages have been flattened, churches destroyed, and children left orphaned. Survivors describe the assaults as deliberate, organized, and aimed at forcing Christians off their ancestral lands. Pastors have been executed in front of their congregations, and countless churches reduced to ashes.
Despite the mounting death toll, the Nigerian government continues to deny any religious motive. Officials describe the violence as farmer and herder disputes or acts of banditry. Yet witnesses and church groups insist that the pattern is too consistent to be dismissed. Attackers are said to arrive chanting anti Christian slogans, targeting churches and villages known for their faith. Security forces often arrive hours later, when there is nothing left to save.
For many Nigerians, silence has become the government’s most dangerous weapon. Each unspoken truth deepens the wound, each denial fuels the killings. The world may debate definitions, but to those who have lost their homes, families, and faith communities, the reality is painfully clear. People are being destroyed for what they believe, and the world’s indifference is helping it happen.
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