Report Confirms That Fulani Militias Are Responsible for Most of the Deaths in Nigeria: 36 Per Day – ZENIT

(ZENIT News – Persecution / Nigeria, 07.13.2026).- According to a six-year study conducted by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), Islamic Fulani militias are by far the deadliest persecutors of Christians in Nigeria. The network of militias is responsible for four times more civilian deaths than the two prominent Islamic terror organizations, Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), combined.

The study’s findings challenge the commonly held belief that the two organized terror groups kill the larger number of Christians, highlighting the Fulani network’s expanded efforts to target Christians.

“Violence linked to Fulani militia is the dominant force behind Nigeria’s death toll. The Western preoccupation with Boko Haram is, at best, misleading,” Frans Vierhout, a senior research analyst at ORFA, told TruthNigeria.

The report shows that terror-related violence killed 79,323 people from 2019 to September 2025. This equates to 36 people a day. More than 42,000 of those killed were civilians.

Islamic Fulani accounted for 44% of the deaths — far more than the 12% that Boko Haram and ISWAP killed together. While nominal Muslims are often targeted and killed in these attacks as well, the study found that Christians were killed at a rate 4.4 times that of Muslims. The study also examined the abduction of Christians in Nigeria.

Further Action Needed

Judd Saul, founder and president of Equipping the Persecuted, which focuses on helping persecuted Christians in Nigeria, applauded the report in a recent email to supporters, saying it validates what their workers have witnessed for years. His organization recently issued a terror alert after at least 150 Christians were massacred throughout the Middle Belt region.

“While President Trump has rightly condemned terrorism in Nigeria and supported military operations against ISIS-linked terrorists, those actions have not addressed what we believe is now the primary threat facing Christian communities throughout Nigeria’s Middle Belt,” Saul said. “As of today, the Trump Administration has taken no direct action to stop the Islamist Fulani Ethnic Militia, the group responsible for the overwhelming majority of attacks against Christian communities in Benue, Plateau, and Kaduna states.”

International Christian Concern (ICC)’s Nigeria-based reporter has documented Fulani extremist attacks for years. In November 2025, ICC cited ORFA’s previous research on Fulani extremism in an article calling for the U.S. to designate the Fulani militias as an Entity of Particular Concern (EPC), following the designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).

ICC’s recently released Global Persecution Index (GPI) offers an in-depth overview of Christian persecution in Nigeria and 20 other countries. It can be downloaded for free.

Thank you for reading our content. If you would like to receive ZENIT’s daily e-mail news, you can subscribe for free through this link.