ABUJA, Nigeria— This week U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced a list of countries that the U.S. government considers “countries of particular concern” for religious freedom violations. The list includes Burma, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Notably absent is Nigeria.

While Nigeria went unmentioned, Blinken on Dec. 6 called Boko Haram, The Islamic State group’s West Africa affiliate and other Islamist groups that have claimed responsibility for kidnappings and deadly attacks against Christians in Nigeria  “entities of particular concern.”

The U.S. State Department’s annual ranking of countries engaging or tolerating severe religious freedom violations dropped Nigeria this year based on 2021 data despite reports that deadly attacks against Christians increased in recent years. Several high-profile kidnappings of Christians this year are deterring groups from providing services in rural communities where needs are the greatest.

The Biden administration’s first religious freedom report triggered criticism from Christian activists and leaders in Nigeria and human rights advocacy groups, who argue the Nigerian government should do more to protect religious freedom in the northern Muslim majority region, where disputes like blasphemy accusations trigger fatal violence.

Nigeria’s population is roughly split between a Muslim north and Christian south. The constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression, thought and conscience, but there are laws criminalizing words or actions that “insult religion.” Sharia, or Islamic law, applies to 12 states and criminalizes blasphemy. Convictions can result in executions.

In summer 2020, the U.S. government under the Trump administration escalated Nigeria’s ranking from a Special Watch List to a Country of Particular Concern, the highest risk designation in the annual ranking. The move followed a spike in religious violence, mainly against Christians in northern Nigeria, where Muslims are the majority.

The annual International Religious Freedom Report describes the status of religious freedom in every country to brief the U.S. Congress and embassies around the world on policies violating religious belief and practices. The goal is to help the U.S. government promote religious freedom around the world. U.S. embassies prepare initial drafts of each country’s report.

In the first 200 days of 2021, at least 3,462 Christians were murdered in Nigeria, according to a report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law. Attacks on Christians in Nigeria increased by 21% in 2021 compared with 2020, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

In June 2022 for example, gunmen attacked St. Francis Catholic Church in Nigeria’s southwestern Ondo State and killed at least 40 people who attended Mass that Sunday morning. A month earlier, a Christian student was killed in Nigeria’s northern state of Sokoto for alleged blasphemy against the Islamic Prophet Mohammed.

In the last three decades, Nigeria, a country of over 200 million people, has consistently witnessed a wave of violent religious conflicts involving not just religious beliefs but also ethnic differences and a struggle for land and cattle-grazing rights. Thousands have lost their lives.

With increasing attacks targeted against Christians, the International Christian Concern, a religious freedom advocacy group, designated Nigeria as one of the world’s top persecutors of Christians in 2021. Open Doors, a nondenominational organization supporting persecuted Christians in the world, ranks Nigeria No. 7 on its 2022 World Watch List annual ranking of 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution.

“The yearly data is something to be worried about,” Adekunle Dada, professor of Biblical Studies and African Christianity, told ReligionUnplugged.com. He added that “the works of the Christians are basically hampered.” Many foreign missionaries have already left the country, he said.

Frequent kidnappings

Kidnappings by criminal gangs make frequent media headlines in Nigeria. In recent years, Christian leaders, including Catholic priests and nuns, have become soft targets. Most hostages are released after a ransom payment, but some have been killed.

In the early hours of Saturday, Nov. 19, Father Victor Ishiwu, a Catholic priest officiating prayer in the country’s southeastern state of Enugu, was kidnapped after his abductors threatened to burn down church facilities. Ishiwu’s abduction came barely one month after Father Joseph Igweagu, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Onitsha, was kidnapped while returning to his house after celebrating a funeral vigil mass in southeastern Anambra State on Oct. 12.

On Aug. 21, unknown gunmen attacked and abducted four Catholic sisters going for a thanksgiving Mass in Nigeria’s oil-producing state of Imo. The abducted sisters were released two days later.

“Kidnappers violate the rights and dignity of the individual. Kidnapping of sisters is an outright violation of the rights and dignity of these sisters and l thank God that all hands were on deck to get them released,” said Sister Eucharia Madueke, the coordinator for women empowerment at Africa Faith and Justice Network, a Washington-based social justice organization.

One of the most internationally known incidents is the attack and killing of Father Paul Offu on Aug. 1, 2019, in the southeastern state of Enugu. Offu’s death triggered a protest by priests in the diocese. The Catholic priests, dressed in their cassocks, marched through the streets of Enugu to the government offices. The incident happened barely five months after Father Clement Ugwu was abducted from St. Mark Catholic Church, his parish in Enugu State. Ugwu’s decomposing corpse was found in a bush after he had been missing for a week.

In May 2022, Samuel Kanu-Uche, the prelate of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, was abducted alongside two other priests while they were on their way from a program in an area council in southeastern Abia State. The clerics were released two days later after a $231,153 ransom was paid to the abductors.

Four days before Kalu-Uche was abducted, gunmen broke into the rectory of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Nigeria’s northern Katsina State. They abducted two priests and two boys in the house. On Sept. 11, suspected Fulani herdsmen killed a Christian security guard and abducted the Rev. Bung Fon Dong of the Church of Christ in Nations in central Nigeria’s Plateau State. The next day, the gunmen contacted the pastor’s family and demanded $46,230 for his release.

“I must say that this is very unfortunate, and the way we are looking at it, it is an effort to cripple the church and to see that the church does not move on,” Markus Danbinta, Nigeria’s Anglican Bishop of Dutse, told Religion Unplugged. “If the leaders are attacked, the target is to scatter the sheep. If those who are leaders of the church are being killed, they (abductors) feel the church will be no more.”

‘Sisters are scared’

In Nigeria, frequent attacks and abductions targeted against Christian leaders have cast a dark shadow over social service work they do in local communities. Most Christian and religious groups no longer visit rural places where they used to provide free services to those in need.

“With the incessant kidnappings of religious people in Nigeria, the works of sisters have been impacted. Sisters are scared to travel for meetings, workshops, gatherings, celebrations (and) to their workplaces,” Madueke said.

These days, Madueke said no workshop or program is held without a proper security plan. “The energy that is needed to think of improvement of ministries is channeled to thinking out how to stay safe and keep people we minister to safe,” she said, adding that “sisters are preoccupied thinking and working out security strategies and, of course, spending the little money they have for ministry to ensure security.”

Africa Faith and Justice Network frequently holds workshops on deradicalization and trains people in peace-building. But some of its planned events have been canceled due to the growing trend of attacks targeted against Christians.

“We planned a workshop and advocacy event in Awka (capital of Nigeria’s southeastern Anambra State) for November this year, but sisters asked that we cancel it, and we have to as we do not want to put anybody in danger,” Madueke said.

But amid attacks targeted against Christian leaders and faithful in Nigeria, Danbinta says the church continues to encourage the people to shun fear and be prayerful.

“Honestly, the level of damage done by these kidnappers and other attacks against the church cannot be calculated. There is constant fear. Church meetings have reduced, and the number of people who come for service has reduced drastically,” Danbinta said.

Yet in the face of this, “The church still encourages the people to pray and most of them gather to help one another.”

Ekpali Saint is a freelance journalist based in Nigeria.