The BBC has expressed faulted the data President Donald Trump of America used to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern after concluding that Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria.
The allegations attracted attention following the address of Vice President Kashim Shettima at the last United Nations General Assembly
Shettima told the UNGA that the situation in Gaza was “heart-wrenching” and demanded an immediate ceasefire that would birth Palestinians independence and a home of their own on territories already recognised by the UN and international law.
According to the Vice President, a two-state solution was the most viable option to peace, warning that contravening international law only fuels propaganda and undermines global stability.
Shortly after the speech, popular US television host and comedian, Bill Maher, said the security challenges Nigeria was contending with was a genocide.
A United States Senator, Ted Cruz, backed Maher, saying Nigeria’s government was enabling a “massacre” of Christians, the world took notice and was carried on social media and repeated in Congress.
They accused Nigerian authorities of ignoring what he called a “Christian genocide.”
“50,000 Christians have been killed since 2009, 2000 schools and 18,000 churches destroyed. The Nigerian government has looked the other way,” Cruz wrote on X.
U.S. President Donald Trump followed Cruz’s remarks and redesignated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, a label reserved for governments accused of tolerating religious persecution.
Trump recently threatened unspecified action against Nigeria over what he called “the killing of Christians,” but the BBC’s findings suggest the data underpinning his claim may be unreliable.
A Senior Research fellow at Open Doors, Frans Veerman, told the BBC that “what we see now is that Christians are still targeted, but increasingly some Muslims are targeted by Fulani militants”.
The British broadcaster reported that the figures repeatedly referenced by Cruz, and other campaigners — including claims that over 100,000 Christians have been killed and 18,000 churches destroyed since 2009 — were difficult to verify.
The BBC found most of these statistics in the reports by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (InterSociety), a Nigerian non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights violations.
However, the report faulted InterSociety’s data collection methods to be “opaque” and cannot be independently verified.
InterSociety acknowledged that it collates figures by combining “summary statistics” from earlier publications with new estimates — a process the BBC said renders verification nearly impossible.
The report also said most victims of the jihadist attacks in Nigeria have been Muslims, negating the narrative of a targeted Christian genocide promoted by some Western politicians.
The Federal Government has severally denied allegations of religious persecution, saying they were “a gross misrepresentation of reality.” Officials maintain that extremist violence in the country affects citizens of all faiths.
Security analysts quoted by the BBC acknowledged that Christians have suffered attacks, they said there is no clear evidence of deliberate religious targeting, adding that what Nigeria was experiencing were multiple security challenges beyond jihadist insurgency.
