Since late 2023, the “Free Palestine” slogan has become commonplace on American college campuses. The Gen Z cultural zeitgeist has certainly centered on issues of injustice abroad. Whatever one’s personal convictions about Israel’s war on Gaza, people generally agree that the senseless killing of civilians is a moral evil. Despite this, both students and the larger media environment have devoted very little attention to the ongoing crisis in Nigeria.
Since 2009, over 185,000 people, including over 125,000 Christians, have been killed in Nigeria, according to the International Report of Nigeria’s Intersociety. One recent attack this June left over 200 Christians dead. Many of these attacks, including the June 2025 attack, have been perpetrated by the Fulani Herdsmen group, who are predominantly Muslim fundamentalists. This violence seems to be accelerating, with 7,000 more Christians killed in the first 220 days of this calendar year.
The official response from the Nigerian government has consisted mainly of calls for dialogue between the two parties. While dialogue is generally a good thing, it is hard to imagine it being productive amidst a genocide, when the dialogue has no enforcement. In many instances, the Nigerian government has been unwilling to arrest Fulani herdsmen perpetrating these attacks and certainly has done little to prevent them.
A few key questions are raised: is the Nigerian government knowingly complicit in genocide, and does this violence qualify as genocide at all? On the first question, it appears indisputable that the Nigerian government has not acted on the capabilities it does have to prevent violence. In fact, the Nigerian government cracked down on protestors across the country last year, demonstrating that the state has at least some real hard power it could utilize to deter attacks. The Nigerian government should stop killing protestors and start preventing killings. On the second question, it also seems clear that this violence is targeted and fulfills the definition of a genocide. According to Open Doors, “many victims have told us that when Fulani militants attack, they don’t just shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is most great’)—they also yell, ‘We will destroy all Christians.’” It is true that some of the victims of these killings have been Muslims, albeit mostly progressive Muslims. It’s not logical to conclude that just because these jihadists kill others, that means they aren’t targeting Christians. If a group is saying they want to “destroy all Christians” and have already killed 125,000, they are probably telling the truth about what they want.
The response from the West has been split, with some cultural critics like Bill Maher calling for an end, while others exclaim that there is no genocide taking place. Perhaps some are worried that recognition of this tragedy will de-emphasize other conflicts like the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. A more cynical view of the origins of this response is that the two groups share a relative level of intersectionality. Within American (and Western) progressive critical theory, the most historically oppressed groups possess an elevated moral standing. This moral standing is what prevents progressives from recognizing recent transgender shootings against Christians as ideologically motivated or wrong, since one group is perceived as privileged and the other as oppressed. In the Nigerian case, because many cultural forces in America view Christians as lower on the intersectional “ladder,” they are unwilling to recognize when they are being murdered and unwilling to call out the behavior of fundamentalist groups like the Fulani herdsmen.
Even if one refuses to consider the widespread violence against Christians in Nigeria a genocide, every rational person should recognize the complete failure of the Nigerian government to protect their own people. The Christians and moderate Muslims in Nigeria are humans who deserve the same level of dignity as people in Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, New York, or anywhere else.
