Makurdi, Nigeria
RNS
When gunfire echoed through villages near her home last month, Grace Tyohemba silenced her phone and waited for the night to pass. Living as a Christian in Nigeria’s central Benue state had taught her caution: lower her voice, skip church services, pray indoors.
Makurdi, where she lives, is the capital of Benue state in north-central Nigeria, a fertile farming region along the Benue River that has repeatedly been hit by attacks blamed on Islamist militants and armed groups.
Days later, Tyohemba’s phone buzzed with unexpected news.
People visit the site of a US airstrike in Jabo, Sokoto state, north-west Nigeria, on 26th December, 2025. PICTURE: AP Photo/ Tunde Omolehin.
Friends told her that US forces, working with Nigeria’s military, had carried out airstrikes on 25th December on camps linked to the Islamic State group in the Muslim-majority Sokoto state, in north-western Nigeria. President Donald Trump called the strikes “a Christmas present”.
Speaking to a reporter by phone, Tyohemba said the announcement stirred something unfamiliar: cautious hope.
“Maybe we can breathe again,” she said. “Maybe we can worship without hiding.”
Across northern and central Nigeria, Christian leaders say the recent US strikes feel like long-delayed recognition of suffering that many believe the world has ignored for decades. For them, the action is not about geopolitics but survival – the chance to attend church openly, send children to school and identify publicly as Christian without fear.
The strikes followed months of increasingly blunt statements by Trump, who began publicly raising concerns about Christian persecution in Nigeria in early October. By the end of the month, he had redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom violations and warned of possible military action.
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After the 25th December strike, Trump said US forces had responded to what he described as the “slaughtering of Christians,” adding that militants had been warned there would be consequences.
Nigeria is widely considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for Christians. The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, a religious-violence watchdog group, reports that more than 7,000 Christians were killed and an additional 7,800 abducted because of their faith in the first seven months of 2025 alone.
The Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa says nearly 56,000 people died in broader ethnic and religious violence between October, 2019, and September, 2023, with Christians disproportionately affected.
Attacks have been blamed on a mix of extremist groups, criminal gangs and long-running conflicts over land and resources, dynamics that often overlap in Nigeria’s north and Middle Belt.
Nigeria’s government has disputed the claim that Christians are more at risk than other groups, with Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar telling the BBC that “terrorism kills indiscriminately, affecting Muslims and Christians alike,” while analysts note the majority of victims from Boko Haram and Islamic State militants have been Muslims.
NIGERIA HIRES US LOBBYISTS TO NURTURE TRUMP TIES, COMMUNICATE CHRISTIAN PROTECTION EFFORTS
Nigeria’s government has hired a US lobbying firm to nurture ties with the Trump administration and counter what it says is misinformation from Christian evangelical groups and others that minimises its efforts to protect the country’s Christians.
US President Donald Trump redesignated Nigeria “a country of particular concern” in November, promising military action if it failed to crack down on the killing of Christians. The US then launched an airstrike in Nigeria on Christmas Day that Trump said targeted Islamist militants.
Newspapers with articles reporting US President Donald Trump’s message to Nigeria over the treatment of Christians hang at a newspaper stand in Ojuelegba, Lagos, Nigeria, on 2nd November, 2025. PICTURE: Reuters/Sodiq Adelakun/File photo
The Nigerian Government has said it is working hard to tackle Islamists and other violent groups, which have attacked both Muslim and Christian civilians, and denies there is any systematic persecution of Christians.
It hired Washington-based consulting firm DCI Group for an initial six months for $US4.5 million, with a similar amount due for a subsequent six months, according to a 18th December filing with the US Department of Justice posted on the DOJ website.
Nigeria’s presidency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A DCI spokesperson confirmed the filing, which appeared in Nigerian media on Wednesday.
“We are pleased to support the Nigerian government in communicating its ongoing and expanding efforts to protect Christians and people of all faiths from radical jihadist groups and other destabilizing elements, and in building trade and commercial ties which benefit both of our countries,” the spokesperson said in an emailed response.
On its website, DCI describes itself as “seasoned political operatives, communication strategists” and “experts at re-framing external narratives, and in delivering the right message to the right audience”.
Nigeria faces a long-running Islamist insurgency in the northeast, armed kidnapping gangs in the northwest and clashes between largely Muslim cattle herders and mainly Christian farmers in a volatile area stretching across the middle of the West African nation.
Trump said the Christmas Day attack killed multiple Islamic State militants, who he said had been targeting Christians. And in an interview with the New York Times published last week, he raised the prospect of more strikes.
In a sign of cooperation between Washington and Abuja, the US military’s Africa Command said on Tuesday that it had delivered critical military supplies to Nigeria to bolster its operations.
– MACDONALD DZIRUTWE, Lagos, Nigeria; Additional reporting by BEN EZEAMALU/Reuters
After the strikes were confirmed, Bishop Emmanuel Adetoyese Badejo of the Catholic Diocese of Oyo in south-western Nigeria said the way the operation was presented mattered as much as the action itself.
He described the strikes as a joint US-Nigeria effort welcomed by Nigerian authorities, a framing he said could help reduce the politicisation that has undermined previous security responses.
In Nigeria’s polarised political climate, Badejo said, nearly every move by authorities is filtered through ethnic and religious suspicion. Emphasising cooperation, he said, may help avoid backlash.
While Nigeria’s government has rejected claims that Christians face genocide, Badejo noted that it has also sought international assistance to stem widespread insecurity, particularly in the north.
He said the strikes could serve as a warning to militant groups that the government’s approach is shifting. Though still early, he added, many Nigerians – Christians and Muslims – view the action as a potentially hopeful step toward addressing terrorism and banditry that have defied solutions for more than 15 years.
Authorities secure the scene of a US airstrike in Jabo, Sokoto state, north-west Nigeria, on Friday, 26th December, 2025. PICTURE: AP Photo/ Tunde Omolehin.
In the capital, Abuja, Rev Patrick Alumuku, director of social communications for the Catholic Archdiocese, described the strikes as a moment of rare reassurance.
He said hearing the news underscored that violence in Nigeria is no longer being ignored beyond its borders.
“For victims, it sends a message that their suffering is known, and that someone cares,” he said.
Alumuku said the collaboration between Nigerian security agencies and Washington suggests a willingness to confront what many Nigerians believe lies at the root of the violence. While officials often describe attacks as banditry or criminality, he said communities experience them as targeted and ideological.
Outside Makurdi, Pastor Emmanuel Ochefu leads a small Pentecostal church that has repeatedly shut its doors because of threats and attacks. In a phone interview with RNS, he said the strikes brought rare relief to pastors who have buried congregants and watched entire communities flee.
For years, he said, openly identifying as Christian has felt dangerous. Parents feared sending children to school. Worship services were shortened or canceled. Many churches closed entirely.
Ochefu urged continued international pressure, saying sustained action could allow churches to reopen and families to resume normal routines.
“Freedom to worship is all we are asking for,” he said. “Not politics, just peace.”
Security analysts caution that airstrikes alone cannot resolve Nigeria’s complex crisis, which combines extremist violence, weak governance, land disputes and deep poverty.
Peter Akachukwu, a Lagos-based security analyst, said lasting improvement would require stronger civilian protection, accountability within security forces and long-term investment in affected regions.
Still, for people like Tyohemba in Makurdi, the strikes have already shifted something intangible.
On Christmas Day, she attended a small prayer gathering for the first time in months. The doors were closed, but the hymns were louder than usual.
“It is fragile hope,” she said. “But after so many years of fear, even that feels like a blessing.”