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

Awe and wonder

Comment

Holidays/vacations

Monastic life

Psychology

9 July 2025

5 min read

You can find the awesome in the everyday not just on holiday

The sources of awe are not scarce, but we do overlook them

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

Awesome in Singapore.

Swaroop Satheesh on Unsplash.

Are you starting to think about holidays? Have you heard yourself trotting forth the old clichés?

“We’re looking forward to getting away from it all.”

“We’re planning something special to take us out of ourselves.”

“Well, it might not be that relaxing with the *kids/dogs/relatives* – but a change is as good as a rest!”

Even if going for the budget-friendly ‘staycation’ this year, there is something about stepping out of our everyday busyness and chores that we find distinctly appealing. We hope that a change of routine, if not a change of place, will afford us some kind of renewal. On holiday we are freed to move to the edges of our lives, even if we can’t escape them entirely, and gain the view from the terrace over the box-hedge-maze of all things quotidian.

But would it help us to visit that terrace a bit more often? This has long been the recommendation of scientists, poets and prophets alike. Most recently, a 2025 study from Yale University researched experiences of “awe” in the everyday. They recruited Long Covid patients and instructed them over a three-month period to slow down several times a day, paying attention to something that they valued or found amazing, whilst breathing and noticing any tangible responses or reactions in their body. The researchers called this process “awe”: Attention, Wait and Exhale. Amongst the participants in the study, the practice of AWE induced a measurable improvement in mental health.

Of course, there have always been people who pause multiple times per day to turn their thoughts away from the mundane. In the Sixth Century, an Italian monk known as Benedict devised a “rule” for those living the monastic life, wherein brothers were required to pause for prayer eight times in every 24 hours – including in the middle of the night! This connected the members of the order not only with God but also with each other. Even if a brother found himself temporarily outside the cloister, going on a journey or working with the poor in the wider community, he was still expected to “join” his community in prayer at the regular hours, stopping whatever he was doing to pray in solidarity.

There are still Benedictine orders today, and others who seek to “pray the hours” based on brother Benedict’s rule. But for most of us, our lives are far from this monastic ideal of community and regularity, even if we do practise the Christian faith. Within a busy schedule, stopping once or twice per day to pray can be a challenge, let alone eight times and regardless of convenience! No matter how much the scientists tell us that it will lift our spirits and do us good, such timefulness is the medicine that the modern life denies. But perhaps this is where the poets can supply deficiencies?

In her great work, Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote:

“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes—
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

It’s a brilliant reminder that sources of awe are not scarce, even if we are prone to overlooking them. In speaking of “he who sees” Browning suggests that there are some people who see the world in a way that anticipates moments of wonder, and that such people are willing to “take off their shoes”. This is an allusion to the story of Moses in the Bible, who, when he encounters the miraculous mystery of the burning bush in the desert, is commanded by God to take off his shoes because the ordinary desert has now become sacred and holy ground – a place of awesome encounter.

Perhaps we should take our cue from brother Benedict, and simply stop and kneel where we are, by the side of the path, in amongst the box-hedge.

This type of atunement is available to any of us, no matter how full the schedule. Even as I write – and you read – this article right now, any of us might pause to take in our surroundings and be able to find something to value and find amazing, a little bit of heaven crammed into earth. It might be a large thing, like the view from the window, or small thing, like the curling steam rising from a cup of coffee on the desk. Anything can become meaningful if we choose to observe its meaning; anywhere can become holy ground if we make it a place of encounter with all that is awe-inspiring and that transcends our daily lives.

What stops us, I wonder? Is it that for me writing this article, and for you reading it, this is just another task that we feel we must finish so that we can hurry along to finishing something else? We must keep pressing on, threading our way through the box-hedge-maze today, because the time for visiting the terrace is not now, it’s later – in a few weeks’ time, when the schools break up and we can finally “get away from it all”.

Perhaps we should take our cue from brother Benedict, and simply stop and kneel where we are, by the side of the path, in amongst the box-hedge. If we look closely, we might even notice that it is made up of a thousand million tiny leaves, each with its own little leafy life to live, each patterned with tiny, intricate veins. Beautiful, and for no obvious reason. Most people will never notice this – but we have seen it now. In the middle of all things quotidian, here is a common bush, and it is afire with God. There is nothing to stop us noticing this, and when we have done so, we can get up, take off our shoes, and continue to walk.

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