U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday that he is putting the West African nation of Nigeria on the “Countries of Particular Concern” list, a major step that comes in the wake of dire warnings from international observer organizations and human rights advocates about the violent persecution of Christians in the country, which is Africa’s most populous.

“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” Trump wrote Friday on his Truth Social platform. “Thousands of Christians are being killed,” he also wrote, “[r]adical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.”

Maintained by the US State Department, the “Countries of Particular Concern” list includes nations the US has determined are engaging in violations of religious freedom of various kinds and to varying degrees. The list includes China, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Pakistan, among others.

Speaking in Rome late last month, on the sidelines of the Aid to the Church in Need 2025 World Report on Religious Freedom in the World, the Vatican’s secretary of state, Pietro Parolin, acknowledged the suffering of Christians in Nigeria but said the situation there is “not a religious conflict, but rather more a social one, for example, disputes between herders and farmers.”

Nigeria, which is Africa’s most populous country and also Africa’s largest oil producer, is split roughly evenly between Christians living mostly in the country’s south and Muslims living mostly in the country’s north, where a dozen states have incorporated some form of Islamic law into their legal systems despite a constitutional ban on adopting an official religion at the federal level.

There has been a major Islamic insurgency operating in Nigeria since 2009, in which scores of thousands of people have been killed either directly or as an indirect result of violence, while some 2.4 million people have been displaced.

Much of the violence is driven by ethnic Fulani Muslim herdsmen not aligned in any organized or official way with Boko Haram, who attack Christian farming communities.

Muslims who resist Islamist ideology are also targeted.

“We should also recognize that many Muslims in Nigeria are themselves victims of this same intolerance,” Parolin said. “These are extremist groups that make no distinctions in pursuing their goals,” Parolin also said, who “use violence against anyone they see as an opponent.”

Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto Diocese in Nigeria has also noted that Muslims who do not espouse the extremist version of Islam are also attacked with some frequency and ferocity.

Kukah acknowledged the fact that Christian minorities in northern Nigeria still face discrimination typified in the refusal by authorities to give land for Church buildings, refusal to rebuild destroyed Churches and restricted access to religious education. Kukah warned, however, that the Nigerian reality cannot be explained simply as a state-backed religious oppression.

“We are not dealing with people going around wielding machetes to kill me because I am a Christian,” Kukah said during the launch of the Aid to the Church in Need report.

“I live in Sokoto,” Kukah said, “in the womb of Islam, and I move freely in my regalia. The Sultan of Sokoto himself attended our events and provided support for our work.”

“This is not to say there are no problems,” Kukah also said, “but the daily realities of interfaith life in Nigeria are far more complex.”

He admitted that terrorist groups have targeted Christian but noted that Muslims who reject their ideology have not been spared, thereby turning large parts of Nigeria into “a tragic killing field.”

Kukah said that explaining the violence in Nigeria as religious oppression ignores the other vectors the spur the killings: weak governance, poverty, ethnicity, and organized crime as much as by religion.

Kukah’s remarks have been criticized sharply.

“Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah is one of the greatest victims of Christian persecution in Nigeria, “said Emeka Umeagbalasi, a Nigerian criminologist and Director of the Catholic-inspired International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Intersociety.

He said Kukah’s Sokoto Diocese “is crumbling under the weight of Jihadist attacks,” and told Crux he found Kukah’s apparent effort to downplay the severity of Christian persecution in Nigeria “simply incomprehensible.”

Fr. Augustine Ikenna Anwuchie, a Nigerian missionary serving in Niger, says he has never doubted Kukah’s courage in speaking truth to power, but on the issue of Christian persecution in Nigeria, “I fear he [Bishop Kukah] has fallen into what I call the ‘elite trap’ — becoming more interested in defending Nigeria’s image and [Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu] Tinubu’s administration than in stating the truth as it is.”

“Regardless of how close he may be to the corridors of power,” Anwuchie said, “he is, first and foremost, a pastor and a prophet — a moral voice and conscience of the nation. His first loyalty should be to truth and justice, not to political image-management.”

Anwuchie said the coexistence of Sharia law with Nigeria’s secular constitution in northern Nigeria is a “form of official terrorism” that marginalizes Christians.

Anwuchie said the “dual system” exposes Christians to judicial bias and mob violence, a persecution that goes far beyond physical insecurity. He also criticized Bishop Kukah, arguing his remarks would only encourage government complacency and weaken calls for accountability in the face of religious terror.

“It is painful to say, but in this instance, Bishop Kukah stood not as a prophetic conscience, but as an ambassador of a Nigeria more interested in image laundering than truth. And that is a dangerous silence — one the suffering Church in Northern Nigeria cannot afford.”

The complex weave of social, political, and economic factors in the situation aside, the latest report by Intersociety indicates a religious component. In just 76 days-between Aug. 10 and Oct. 26, this year, at least 100 Christians have been massacred and 120 others kidnapped.

The Intersociety report raises an alarm about “continuation, intensification, unchecked, untamed, widespread, coordinated and systematic attacks by Islamic Jihadists and their enablers, aiders and abettors against defenseless Christians in Nigeria.”

According to researchers at Intersociety, Fulani Jihadists abducted more than 1,000 Christians between December 2023 and October 2024. While an estimated 200 have been ransomed and freed, over 800 others remain in captivity.

“It is also our estimation that 120 have died in captivity since February 2025 and no fewer than ten of the Christian hostages killed in captivity in the past 76 days or since August 10,” the intersociety report reads.

An average of 32 Christians are being killed per day in Nigeria, according to an earlier report from Intersociety. The August 2024 report documented at least 7,087 Christians massacred in the first 220 days of the year, alongside the kidnapping of nearly 8,000 others for their faith.

The killings are part of a larger pattern of violence that has claimed over 185,000 lives since 2009, including 125,009 Christians and 60,000 Muslims targeted for opposing Jihadi extremism. The report also indicated that over 19,100 churches have been destroyed, 20,000 square miles of land annexed, and more than 600 clerics abducted, with dozens killed in captivity.