*Fingers Jihadist Herdsmen, Bandits For Attacks
*’Who Leaked Documented Statistics On Nigeria’s Forests To Jihadist Herdsmen, Bandits?’
Prominent civil liberties group, International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (InterSociety), has reviewed happenings around Christians in 2025 and strongly criticized many Christian political leaders for playing unpleasant passive roles while their brethren were being killed and religious freedom impacted negatively.
In a new report signed by Head of InterSociety, Barrister Emeka Umeagbalasi, and made available to newsmen, the organisation poured scorn on Christian political leaders for what it described as their “silence and fear”, saying 2025 was “their worst era of integrity test” in defending the faith and its institutions.
The report also revealed that jihadist Fulani bandits and herdsmen were responsible for more than 70 per cent of violent attacks on Christian communities and places of worship across Nigeria in the year under review.
InterSociety warned that the scale and coordination of the violence amounted to a grave threat to national unity and constitutional order.
Labelling United States (US) President Donald Trump as a “defender of Nigerian christians in 2025,” the group noted that his interventions during the Christmas and New Year period helped avert further attacks.
It further named the US and Canada as the “most Christian religion-friendly and defending countries” in relation to Nigeria in 2025 while thumbing up some lawmakers, clergy and advocacy groups for what it described as their outspoken defence of persecuted Christians.
InterSociety noted that mass killings of Nigerians and the destruction of churches have been “systematic, well-coordinated and clearly known to leaders of Nigeria since June 2015.”
It stated: “By our collected statistics and other pieces of evidence, it is our finding that leaders of Nigeria since June 2015 have gravely compromised the country’s sovereignty, threatened its unity and undermined the religious and constitutional secularism upon which Nigeria was founded.”
InterSociety accused successive administrations of presiding over what it described as an “ethno-religiously polarised state of nature,” alleging that violence against Christian communities has been particularly severe in the Middle Belt, the North-East, Southern Kaduna, Kebbi, Katsina, parts of Ondo State, and Eha-Amufu in Enugu State.
According to the group, jihadist Fulani herdsmen and bandits have emerged as “the most widespread and atrocious and government-friendly Islamic terror groups in Nigeria,” allegedly driving attacks framed around “convert to Islam or die” campaigns.
The organisation asserted that these groups accounted for more than 70 per cent of attacks on Christians and their sacred places of worship in 2025.
The report further alleged that the violence followed a structured pattern, claiming that attacks were executed through “structural, cultural and physical violence dimensions.”
It cited controversial government policies such as RUGA settlements, pastoral grazing reserves and ranching initiatives as measures that, in InterSociety’s view, facilitated forced settlement of armed herders among indigenous Christian populations.
InterSociety also raised questions over Nigeria’s forest security, referring to an alleged 2015 forest-mapping exercise by the Nigerian Army that identified more than 11,000 forests nationwide.
The group asked how detailed knowledge of forest locations, especially in Christian-majority regions, became accessible to armed groups who later established camps there.
“If the above disclosures are true, who leaked the documented statistics on Nigeria’s forests to jihadist Fulani herdsmen and bandits?” the report queried, noting that increased incursions reportedly began in early 2016 during the Muhammadu Buhari administration and coincided with several internal military operations.
Despite its grim assessment, the organisation credited international pressure for preventing an even higher death toll.
The organization claimed that “not less than 600 Christian lives and dozens of churches were saved” in 2025 through sustained advocacy on international religious freedom and diplomatic interventions.
InterSociety stated that its findings were intended to “encourage stronger domestic and international action” against armed groups operating in forests across the Middle Belt, the South-East, South-South, South-West and parts of the North.
While the allegations are sweeping, InterSociety urged Nigerian authorities and the international community to investigate the claims thoroughly, warning that failure to address the underlying drivers of the violence could further destabilise Africa’s most populous nation.
