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Nearly 5,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2025 — 72% of them in Nigeria. For decades, the African country has been marked by bloodshed, and its government is complicit.

Brad Brandon, founder and CEO of the relief-work nonprofit Across Nigeria, told The Washington Stand that the instability Nigeria experiences festers as a genocide is happening against its own people, and the Nigerian authorities turn a blind eye.

Nigerian Government Accused of Whitewashing Christian Genocide

But when it comes to covering up the facts, the government moves efficiently and doesn’t spare any expense. Reports in early 2026, verified by the Justice Department’s records, showed the Nigerian government paid $9 million to the Washington D.C. public relations firm, the DCI Group. According to Brandon, the investment enabled lobbyists to persuade members of Congress not to shine a light on the Christian genocide happening overseas.

In addition to paid lobbyists, Brandon claims the Nigerian government pays off mainstream media outlets — both international and American — to give minimal to no coverage to the genocide Nigeria is enabling. The nonprofit leader continued that Across Nigeria is building a case to expose possible corruption.

“[It looks like] they’re funnelling money to the subset groups that are attached to these media outlets, and so we’re trying to sift through which of these subset groups are attached to which legacy media outlets,” he said.

Brandon explained that the more Across Nigeria researched the Nigerian government’s investments, the more they found.

“In 2024, there was $547 billion that was divested from Nigeria, so foreign investors took that money out of Nigeria because of the instability. So, the logical conclusion is that Nigeria is trying to whitewash. They’re trying to clean up their global image, whitewash this genocide, so that they can attract those foreign investors back into the country.”

Security Forces Turn a Blind Eye as Christians Are Massacred

While radical Islamic terrorist groups massacre believers, Nigerian officials are slow to act, said Brandon. He recalled a time when he and others from Across Nigeria visited a community of widows in Nigeria, before getting called away to aid an attacked neighbouring community. Local security forces were immediately notified — but took almost three hours to arrive on the scene, despite being stationed 20 minutes away.

“When we got there, there were 10 that were massacred, and we ended up burying them in a mass grave,” Brandon shared.

“There’s no reason that it should have taken them two to three hours. And then, shortly after that, the security forces left. And later that night, that same village was attacked again, and five people were killed.”

“That was an attack against Christians. …The instability caused by radical Islamic groups like ISWA [Islamic State West Africa] and Boko Haram has opened the door to lawlessness throughout northern Nigeria, which has given opportunity to banditry groups to feel like they can walk into a community, slaughter 60 people, kidnap people, steal whatever they need to steal, and walk away and get away with it. And they do every single day because there’s no security forces being brought in to stabilise the region.”

Brandon noted that while the Nigerian government denies the attacks target Christians, he is not convinced. “We see the amount of Christians who are being killed and how they’re inordinately being targeted,” he asserted.

“I think there’s a case to be made that the Nigerian government is complicit in this. The Boko Haram and ISWA are very strong political, not only terrorist organisations, but political organisations. In northern Nigeria, most of the political power is held in the north, and the north is mostly Muslim. It’s about 90% Muslim in northern Nigeria.”

The Gospel Remains Nigeria’s Greatest Hope

While Brandon says the Nigerian government likes to boast of its “inclusivity” where Christians and Muslims are concerned, the country’s constitution mentions of Islam and Sharia law more than 100 times but makes no mention of Christianity.

“So, it does favour Islam in a major way,” Brandon explained. “The attacks in the north have been allowed to go on, and the security forces and the Nigerian government have done nothing in 15 years to secure it.”

While lives are lost almost every day, Brandon is sure the hope of God’s Word can heal the Nigerian nation.

“We believe that the Gospel is the solution to this problem,” Brandon declared. “Governments can help, organisations can help, but the ultimate solution is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

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Republished with thanks to The Washington Stand. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.