We’re ignoring Nigeria's hellish underbelly

Why the West averts its gaze from anti-Christian violence there.

Chris Wadibia

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development.

A burnt out motor cycle and car stand amid charred debris in a dusty compound.

Burned vehicles after Good Friday raid on April 7, 2023, in Ngban, Benue state, Nigeria.

Justice, Development, and Peace Commission.

Moments ago a Christian was killed in Nigeria—again. For the 100 million Christians living in Nigeria, news of brutal murders of their fellow worshippers has become commonplace. Every day 14 Christians in Nigeria die because of their faith. Nigeria is a land of extreme paradoxes known for many things. It’s one of the world’s leading oil producers. It’s home to the globally popular Afrobeats music scene. Its distinguished citizens include director-general of the World Trade Organisation Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, president of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Amina Mohammed, and former president of the International Criminal Court Chile Eboe-Osuji, just to name a few. Its global diaspora of 17 million consists of Nigerians working in positions of power in virtually every industry imaginable. From banking, finance, and tech to professional sports, higher education, healthcare, culinary arts, and consulting, there is not a single major industry in the world whose list of leaders does not include a Nigerian name.

But just as every coin has two sides, so does Nigeria. Nigeria's story is incomplete without explaining its hellish underbelly. Well over 60 per cent of Nigeria's population, or at least 133 million of its citizens, live in a state of multidimensional poverty. The vast oil wealth generated by its oil industry only benefits a minuscule sliver of its elephantine population.

Nigeria is the global leader in anti-Christian violence. Since 2009, over 52,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria by Islamist extremists. In the last 15 years, over 18,000 churches and 2,200 schools in Nigeria have been set on fire. Open Doors, a charity whose mission focuses on providing support to persecuted Christians globally, estimates that 90 per cent of murders targeting Christians across the world in 2022 took place in Nigeria. Islamist extremists killed at least 145 Nigerian Catholic priests in 2022 alone.

Anti-Christian violence is evil just like antisemitic and Islamophobic violence are both evil.

For people enjoying religious freedom in Europe and the United States, violence against Christians feels like a thing of the past. The concept of anti-Christian violence in the West triggers thoughts of Europe's religious wars in the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries, or The Troubles between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland in the 20th century.

However, the scale of anti-Christian violence in Nigeria puts it in a league of its own. In the West we take for granted the freedom of religion because we have had it for so long. It is human nature to take for granted the aspects of life we have grown most accustomed to. Ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has reignited in Western public debate the pervasive, threatening existence of antisemitism and Islamophobia in Western societies.

But why has the consistent, monstrously murderous Christophobia in Nigeria that has unfolded in the last two decades not cemented its place within Western public discourse? Do Christians in the West only demand action when White Christians get murdered? Are 52,000 brutal, gory killings of Black Christian bodies in Sub-Saharan Africa not sufficient reason for the powers that be in global Christian society to mobilise their vast political, military, and economic resources to intervene, protect, and bring peace?

Christians running for their lives in Nigeria are as much part of the bride of Christ as Southern Baptists sipping sweet tea in Alabama on a Sunday afternoon.

Violence against Christians is not a thing of the past. It is as real a phenomenon today as it has ever been. Few states in the Majority World have developed for themselves a reputation for institutional ineptitude and malfeasance more so than Nigeria. Solutions for ending Nigeria's anti-Christian violence will not come from the Nigerian state. Instead, they must come from the religious sector, civil society, foreign governments, and private actors. Anti-Christian violence in Nigeria is not motivated solely by extremist Islamist zealotry, albeit the influence of this element certainly plays a part. Poverty, competition for scarce resources, and relative deprivation along with educational underdevelopment and political profiteering on the heel of Christophobia are collectively responsible for these violent acts.

In Christian theology, Jesus Christ has a bride; this bride is the church, or all who believe in Christ and follow his teachings. Christians running for their lives in Nigeria are as much part of the bride of Christ as Southern Baptists sipping sweet tea in Alabama on a Sunday afternoon, Anglicans enjoying a Sunday roast, or Pentecostals in São Paolo playing football on the beach after a midweek worship service. The killing of one Christian in Nigeria is an assault on the 2.4 billion Christians living across the world. Christ has only one bride, and He lovingly cares for each member of His bride equally, overwhelmingly, and powerfully.

Anti-Christian violence is evil just like anti-semitic and Islamophobic violence are both evil. Western media’s reluctance to report about these murders and offer platforms to activists, clerics, and stakeholders whose voices can help galvanise support for ending this violence cannot be separated from irreducibly influential Western religious gazes that dehumanise and deprioritise the lives, experiences, and sufferings of non-White Christians globally. Until anti-Christian violence in Nigeria comes to an end, the collective dignity of Christians worldwide will remain tainted by a scourge those with power are too apathetic to eradicate.

Article

Care

Comment

Mental Health

8 September 2025

4 min read

Suicide prevention cannot be done in isolation

Community response is needed, not just remote call-handling

Rachael Newham

Rachael is an author and theology of mental health specialist.

Three posters with suicide prevention messages.

Samaritans adverts.

Suicide is a tragedy that leaves devastation in its wake for individuals, families and communities - but it remains shrouded in stigma. Whilst those who die by suicide are grieved and mourned amongst their communities, those who experience suicidal thoughts or who survive suicide attempts are often dismissed as ‘attention-seeking’ or ‘dramatic’.

The truth is, our response as a society to suicide is one which often ignores those who are most vulnerable until it is too late. According to the UK Office for National Statistics, the number of people dying by suicide has risen steadily since 2021, and whilst some of this can be attributed to the way in which deaths are recorded, it also represents a real and urgent need to change the narrative around suicide and the suicidal.

As the need has risen, we have also seen that services seeking to support those struggling with rising costs and rising demand.

Just 64 per cent of urgent cases and 72 per cent of routine cases were receiving treatment within the recommended time frames and the proportion of NHS funding being allocated to mental health falling between 2018 and 2023 highlights that the parity of esteem for mental health promised back in 2010 seems to grow further away.

Against this backdrop, for over seventy years, the Samaritans have been synonymous with suicide prevention, working where the health service has struggled to be. It’s sometimes been referred to as the fourth emergency service and has been providing spaces, mainly staffed by volunteers, in person, on the phone and online for people to express their despair in confidence.

And yet earlier this year, it was announced that over the next decade, at least 100 of its branches would be closing, moving to larger regional working and piloting remote call-handling.

Whilst this might be an understandable move considering the economic landscape for the Samaritans, it risks not only a backlash from the volunteers upon which Samaritans relies but also reducing the community support that locally resourced hubs provide.

Suicide prevention cannot be done in isolation; it has to be done in and with community.

Even the most well-trained and seasoned volunteer might find particular calls distressing, and the idea that they would have to face these remotely, without other volunteers to support them, is concerning.

I think this needs to be a wake-up call, not just for the sector - but society as a whole. Because when it comes to suicide, we need to work together to see an end to the stigma and a change in the way people are supported.

Suicide prevention cannot be left up to charities, we all have a role to play.

It matters how we engage with one another, because suicide can affect anyone. There are undoubtedly groups within society who are at a higher risk (for example, young people and men in their middle age).

Still, nobody is immune to hopelessness, and even the smallest acts of kindness and care can help to prevent suicide.

In the Bible story of the Good Samaritan, from which Samaritans take its name, Jesus tell the story of a man brutally robbed and left for dead on the roadside. A priest and a Levite avoid the man and the help he so clearly needs, but a Samaritan (thought of as an enemy to Jesus’ audience) was the one to not only care for his physical wounds, but also pay for him to recuperate at an inn.

We need to have our eyes open to the suffering around us, but also a willingness to help. It probably won’t be by giving someone a lift on a donkey as it is in the story(!) but it will almost certainly involve asking the people we meet how they are and not only waiting for the answer, but following it up to enable people to share.

It might require us to challenge the language used around suicide; moving from the stigmatising “committing suicide” with its roots in the criminalisation of suicide which was present before 1962 to “died by suicide”, and shifting from terms like “failed suicide attempt” to “survived suicide attempt” so that those who must rebuild their lives after an attempt are met with compassion and not condemnation.

Above all, we need to be able to see beyond labels such as “attention seeking” or “treatment resistant” to reach the person whose hope has run dry, and allow our hope to be borrowed by those most in need, both through our language and our actions.

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