Market News

The persecution of Nigeria’s Christians is medieval in its horror. Villages are surrounded in the dead of night by bandits who rape and kill the inhabitants. No one is spared: women and children are among those butchered.

The Makurdi Diocese, in Nigeria’s Middle Belt Benue state, has been hit badly by this savage violence. In 2024, 549 locals in this diocese alone were murdered and dozens more kidnapped. Over 3,700 people in Makurdi have been killed since 2015. Villages have been effectively wiped off the map. Over a million Nigerians, terrified of what might await them, have chosen instead to live in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps.

Wilfred Anagbe, the Catholic Bishop of the diocese of Makurdi, home to about a million people, says the massacres are a systematic attempt to kill Christians and Islamise the region – and that the authorities are turning a blind eye to the killing of Christians:

‘The quest to Islamise the land is high on the agenda of some of the most powerful and influential Muslims in Nigeria.