The Free Press
As Christians Are Slaughtered, the World Looks Away
Islamists massacred over 200 people in Yelwata, Nigeria—many of them women and children. The media barely mentioned it.
By Madeleine Kearns
06.26.25 — Faith
It was a night of heavy rainfall in Yelwata, a town in central Nigeria. On Friday June 13, over 500 Christians—many of them women and children—gathered together in temporary shelters in the town’s Market Square. Most of them had fled their homes across the region, hoping to find greater protection in Yelwata from a spate of recent attacks in which Islamist terrorists have massacred Christians.
Earlier in the day, the town’s armed vigilantes and a few policemen had set off to investigate reports of terrorist activity nearby. But this turned out to be a diversion, according to Steven Kefas, a Nigerian journalist.
At around 10:30 p.m., he told me, a “killer squad” of Islamists descended on the town in a three-hour murderous rampage.
Father Ukuma Jonathan, the local parish priest, was in the presbytery with displaced Christians when they heard yells of “Allahu Akbar,” gunfire, and screams. Everyone immediately dropped to the floor, fearing for their lives, according to John Pontifex, head of press and public affairs at Aid to the Church in Need UK, who spoke to Father Jonathan the day after the attack.
The jihadists broke into homes and shelters, murdering people with machetes. They were “cutting them like they were cutting a cow or an animal to be eaten,” said Kefas, who visited Yelwata and interviewed around 30 survivors the week after the massacre. The terrorists then doused their victims’ bodies and homes in petrol and set them ablaze.
“It’s psychological,” said Kefas. “They could just shoot people and move on. So I feel going the extra length of butchering these people is to send a message to the survivors that: ‘Hey, look what we’ve done to these people. That’s what we’re going to do to you if you don’t vacate your land.’ ”
At this writing, the death toll is 218, but it could keep climbing as survivors continue to die from their injuries. Many bodies were burned beyond recognition. Photographs of the aftermath— shared with The Free Press—show charred human remains and buildings’ blood-stained floors and walls. Among the most disturbing images we reviewed showed the bodies of Christians hacked to death with machetes: The corpse of a boy, around 6 or 7 years old, lay flat on his back, his eyes wide open, his shirt covered in blood. His killer had left a giant gash across his face and head. His left hand was hanging loose at the joint; his right hand was severed completely.
The attack, though exceptional in scale and barbarity, is part of a pattern of persecution that Christians in Nigeria have come to expect. In April, in the run-up to Easter, 170 Christians were killed in the counties of Ukum and Logo. On May 24, at least 10 Christians were fatally shot in the villages of Tse-Ubiam and Tyolaha.
In the following days, terrorists gunned down dozens more Christians in Aondona and Ahume, returning to kill survivors. The total estimated death toll was over 70 Christians, according to Ryan Brown, CEO of Open Doors, a U.S.-based charity that advocates for persecuted Christians worldwide.
And in June, two farmers and two women were killed in Islamist attacks in the villages of Udei and Tse Ivokor—as was a volunteer who was trying to recover their bodies.
Yelwata was once thought of as relatively safe. According to Pontifex, around 95 percent of its population is Christian, and the town is close to the main road that leads to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, meaning there’s more of a police presence there than in remote areas.
But these recent attacks have shattered the hope that Christians can live in peace in the area.
The world should have seen it coming.
Since 2009, Islamists in northern Nigeria have destroyed over 18,000 churches and, throughout the country, have murdered over 50,000 Christians. A further 5 million Christians have been displaced within the country, according to a 2023 Vatican report.
In March, Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of Makurdi, the capital of Benue State, which contains Yelwata, traveled to the United States to address Congress, and took the opportunity to raise awareness of these atrocities—which are committed by Islamists who belong to a semi-nomadic ethnic group known as the Fulani, some of whom are responsible for murders in other West African nations, including Mali and Cameroon.
The bishop testified that “militant Fulani herdsmen are terrorists. They steal and vandalize, they kill and boast about it, they kidnap and rape, and they enjoy total impunity from the elected officials. None of them have been arrested and brought to justice.”
He noted that though they predominantly target Christians, Fulani militants kill moderate Muslims as well: Over 34,000 have been murdered since 2009.
“Over 200 people were slaughtered. You can’t find it on CNN. CNN will not make it a topic.” —Steven Kefas, Nigerian journalist
Nigeria’s 238 million-strong population is split almost exactly 50-50 between Christians and Muslims, but the bishop warned that there is “a long-term Islamic agenda to homogenize the population . . . through a strategy to reduce and eventually eliminate the Christian identity of half of the population.”
The Muslim Public Affairs Centre, a Nigeria-based organization, attacked the bishop’s remarks as “misleading and dangerous,” claiming that they relied on “Islamophobic tropes.”
Anagbe’s comments also seem to have angered Fulani militants.
“There’s a link being made between the bishop speaking out in Congress and his own village of Aondona in Benue State being targeted at the end of May,” said Pontifex.
On March 17, after Anagbe’s address, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa urged President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on Nigeria due to Christian persecution. Trump did designate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” toward the end of his last term. But it seems he has not yet taken the subcommittee up on their recent request. The Biden administration, meanwhile, came under heavy fire from Republicans for failing even to acknowledge violations of religious freedom in Nigeria.
As Western governments have turned away from the issue, so too has the mainstream media. “If 10 people are killed in Ukraine, it becomes a major headline across all the newspapers across the world. If 100 people are killed in Gaza, it becomes the major news item on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and co.,” said Kefas. By contrast, several of the Islamist attacks in Nigeria have never been reported by the mainstream media in the West; it has been left to the small Christian press to cover the story.
“Over 200 people were slaughtered. You can’t find it on CNN. CNN will not make it a topic. Al Jazeera will not make it a topic where you have guests coming to analyze this situation,” said Kefas.
His assessment was blunt: “The international community has failed these people.”
If Western media reports on the persecution at all, it typically characterizes it as land disputes between neighboring ethnic groups. For instance, after the atrocities at Yelwata, the BBC reported: “The authorities have not blamed any group, but it is safe to assume that there are lots of victims on both sides, as any attack usually leads to revenge and then a cycle of violence.”
But where is the evidence that Christians are killing Fulani Muslims by the hundreds, shouting “Christ is king” as they hack people of other faiths to death?
True, the terrorists may seize their neighbors’ land out of opportunism, or desperation. But the way they target Christians—killing them at Mass or on their holy days—as well as their sheer brutality is proof of their “conquest ideology,” said a priest who survived a slaughter in Benue State that took place during Holy Week.
Since 2009, Islamists in northern Nigeria have destroyed over 18,000 churches and, throughout the country, have murdered over 50,000 Christians.
To Kefas, the mainstream media’s framing is deeply insulting as well as inaccurate.
“How do you butcher a 9-month-old child? Can a 9-month-old child carry out any form of trouble or fight anybody? No, they can’t.
“So all this narrative you hear . . . where they say, ‘Oh, it’s a farmer versus herder,’ it’s all nonsense,” he said. “It’s all lies, because the reality on the ground is that you have an aggressor who comes into a sleeping community and slaughters people and disappears to plan for another attack.”
The idea that Christians resort to similar violence is unfounded, Kefas said. After the attack in Yelwata, “the victims have not gone to kill the Fulanis.”
A charitable interpretation of all this is that the facts of these attacks in Nigeria are hard to come by. In the aftermath, many eyewitnesses flee or are afraid of speaking out. Law enforcement isn’t always available or reliable. It takes dedicated teams of on-the-ground reporters and aid workers to verify exactly what happened.
That’s why, according to Brown, the CEO of Open Doors, it can take time to “get those types of verifications.” Still, he said, once the facts have been established—as they have in Yelwata—it is important that they are reported accurately. After all, if the terrorists “know they can attack Christians with impunity, that certainly adds fuel to the fire.”
Christians have begged their government to provide better security and to bring their oppressors to justice. According to Pontifex, Nigeria “has the capacity to provide adequate security and yet the complaint made by the bishop and the priest and others is that that security is not in place.”
As for why not: “Accusations have been made of incompetence, lack of will and, in some cases, collusion.”
On Saturday, thousands gathered in Makurdi, the capital of Benue State, to protest the killings. According to Open Doors US, police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Kefas said that, in speaking with victims, he was struck by the indignities their community has endured. The few bodies that were not burnt were hastily “given mass burial in a shallow grave,” he said, for fear that the attackers could return at any moment.
“A reverend father says prayers, but that’s all,” said Kefas. “There’s no memorial. There are communities where you go to now, in these Christian areas—maybe they were attacked 10 years ago—you can’t even find the graves anymore. There’s no memory of these people that were slain. They are gone. Forgotten.”
For those who survive, the grief and fear feels too great to bear. One man Kefas interviewed had lost eight family members—including his wife, son, and brother—in the Yelwata attack. “The communities have lost hope. What somebody told me is that they are like walking corpses,” said Kefas.
“When I returned back from Yelwata on Saturday, I couldn’t sleep. There’s this feeling of death around me.”
Madeleine Kearns
Madeleine Kearns is an associate editor at The Free Press. Previously, she was a staff writer at National Review where she regularly appeared on the magazine’s flagship podcast, The Editors. Her work has also appeared in The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph, UnHerd, and a range of other publications. She writes and performs music.
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