Around 5:30 p.m. on February 3, Joel Adisa, a 27-year-old Christian resident of Kaiama, a town in Nigeria’s Kwara State, received reports over Facebook and WhatsApp warning area residents to avoid the road linking his hometown to the majority-Muslim village of Woro as armed men were attacking Woro.
“I ran indoors and shut my doors,” Adisa said. “It was a night of fear and panic.”
That night, he searched for information about the attack online but found nothing. The uncertainty worried him. The next morning, he woke up and checked his phone, where he saw the local TV station’s coverage littered with pictures of dead bodies from Woro.
“They were people that many of us [in Kaiama] knew,” he said.
Adisa said the attackers had sent a letter to the community announcing their intent to come preach extremist Islamic fundamentalism but began attacking Woro and nearby Nuku when the villagers rejected their demands and ideology. Armed men killed about 200 people and kidnapped 163 others. At least 23 of those slain were Christians. The captives remained with their abductors for six months until a joint operation of the Nigerian police, military, and intelligence and counterterrorism agencies freed them in early August. The task force also recovered at least 145 abductees seized from Niger state in a separate kidnapping.
Joshua Olarenwanju, the Christian Association of Nigeria coordinator in Kaiama, said 46 Christians were among those freed—including one man’s six children: “This is an answer to our prayers. This is God’s intervention, and we must thank him in church this Sunday.”
The operation, which rescued 308 kidnapped victims, is regarded as the largest single-day rescue by Nigeria’s security team. President Bola Tinubu attributed their release to a growing synergy among Nigeria’s security agencies.
Local Christians and international media had previously criticized the government for its inaction—Nigeria has an army capable of stopping coups in neighboring countries yet is unable or unwilling to quell terrorist attacks at home, they argued. Since the United States and Nigeria forged a partnership in late 2025 to strengthen the military’s response to terrorist groups and kidnappers, Christians in the region have expressed a mix of hope and caution.
Yahaya Haruna, an Evangelical Missionary Society coordinator in northwest Nigeria, told CT that his organization shut down 15 local missionary groups in the past year due to the insecurity in the region. He hopes the security partnership may help return stability to the region.
“Some communities can’t be accessed due to the insecurity,” he said. “Many Christians in the area have now fled their communities out of fear.”
But Haruna also worries locals may become more hostile to Christians in the region, especially new converts: “We just have to be more careful. The situation is far from over, and it is complicated.”
The United Nations Development Programme estimates Islamic terrorists killed over 350,000 people in Nigeria between 2009 and 2020. Jihadists have also destroyed over 19,000 churches, displaced more than 1,100 communities, and killed 125,000 Christians since 2009.
Last November, President Donald Trump threatened to cut off aid and possibly intervene militarily unless the West African state stepped up efforts to protect Christians from attacks. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu rejected unilateral US military action but asked the US for help tackling Islamist militants and armed groups that have been killing and kidnapping Nigerian citizens.
Joint strikes took place on Christmas Day. Then in February, the United States sent 100 military personnel to northern Nigeria to train and share intelligence with local forces. Later it also deployed drones to aid combat. A joint strike killed ISIS’s top leader Abubakar Al-Minuki and other key players in May. Trump then praised Tinubu’s counterterrorism efforts in a July letter and reiterated the White House’s commitment to the security partnership with Nigeria.
Some Nigerian Christians told International Christian Concern that US intervention “could complicate matters.” Others, such as Adisa, say they welcomed it with caution. They want the terrorists stopped yet also know military actions mean counterattacks.
“Many people are losing hope in the government,” Adisa said. “The killings have continued; there has been no reasonable outcome.”
Critics of the partnership questioned whether the US-backed strikes can make a meaningful difference in Nigeria’s complex environment—where violence is fueled by governance problems and poverty—when previous military action and terrorist rehabilitation efforts have failed to end the country’s security crises.
Decades of internal terrorist attacks have stretched Nigeria’s military thin, leaving many communities in Nigeria’s north and middle belt vulnerable to targeted violence.
In December 2025, the Nigerian Army reported rescuing 1,023 victims within a one-year period. Over 3,000 people were kidnapped the same year, down from a 2024 spike of 5,171 people. (Only 2,653 were reported in 2023.) The first four months of 2026 saw 1,505 reported kidnapping victims, and separate news reports of mass rescues in 2026 indicate over 1,100 captives rescued this year so far. And this doesn’t account for smaller rescues. Nigeria doesn’t have a centralized reporting system, so CT was unable to obtain the actual number of victims recovered across the country year to year.
While the Nigerian government seems to have increased large-scale rescues of abducted Christians and moderate Muslims since November, kidnappings continue. So do killings like the one in Adisa’s area.
Rural communities have also struggled to curtail terrorism. In 2017, local leaders in Sokoto invited Lakurawa fighters, an armed group of herdsmen that now combines organized crime and jihadism, to battle bandits and protect residents. The group later turned to violent methods similar to those of terrorists, enforcing Islamic laws, kidnapping for ransom, flogging people for listening to music, and recruiting local young men. When the group intensified attacks on civilians, Nigeria’s authorities officially declared the Lakurawa group a terrorist organization and banned it. According to the Institute for Security Studies, the US strike in December killed over 100 Lakurawa fighters.
Christopher Garba, a Christian living in north-central Nigeria, said neither the army nor vigilantes protected his village this summer. In the past, Fulani herdsmen often visited during the rainy season in search of pasture for their flocks. Garba said the community never had a conflict with the Fulani herdsmen: “They always moved around peacefully.”
But in July, Fulani herdsmen attacked Nardion, his small Christian community in Kaduna state. Local vigilantes tried to ward off the attack, but the gunmen overpowered them, Garba said.
“The vigilantes tried their best, but these [herdsmen] came in a huge number and overpowered them,” he said. “They struck fear in the vigilantes because this was the first occurrence here.”
The herdsmen killed at least 30 residents, including five of Garba’s young nieces and nephews. Garba said for two hours they called security officers to intervene, “but there was no response.”
Local soldiers later told his community that the attackers had overpowered them so they could do nothing, Garba added.
“Local villagers can’t call America,” he warned. “The [Nigerian] government must take serious actions. If this exceeds their power, then they can look for external support.”
Favour John, a missionary in northern Nigeria, said international assistance will be effective if the government allows US troops to visit affected communities and interact with the people: “It will help our government to be more proactive. I believe it will have a lot of [positive] effects.”
John said that since even local police don’t help them, churches use young men from their congregations as security during church services to search attendees for weapons and prevent intruders. This is especially important in rural communities, where terrorists often attack women and children.
“These attacks have a way of scaring Christians in the communities and making us look weak,” she said.
Terrorist attacks stretch beyond Nigeria across the West African Sahel region, dubbed the “epicentre of global terrorism” last year. These account for more than half of the world’s terrorism-related deaths, according to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI).
Islamic extremists, including Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen, Islamic State Sahel Province, Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) and other non-state actors, such as the disbanded Russian proxy Wagner Group, have capitalized on the collapse of international counterterrorism support in the region. This has also fueled recent coups in Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger.
From 2018 to 2023, Islamic jihadist violence in Burkina Faso forced 1,339 churches to close, destroyed 89 others, and killed at least 10 pastors, while hundreds fled their homes.
Following a July 2023 coup, Niger’s military junta suspended its military agreement with the US and France, ending years of security cooperation in the Sahel region and discontinuing a US drone base near Agadez used for surveillance in the region. Kevin Rideout, an American missionary pilot, who was kidnapped last October from his home in the capital of Niamey by three suspected Islamist militants, remained in captivity for almost ten months. On Friday, SIM International announced Rideout has been freed.
Some Christians who live in communities hit by conflict believe international intervention brings global attention and often pressures the government into decisive action where local efforts alone have struggled to slow ongoing Christian persecution.
“There is panic in the community,” Joshua Olarenwanju said. “There is no rest of mind. If there is any need for [international] security to come, we would be glad to hear that.”
Adisa left Kaiama in May to begin his National Youth Service, a yearlong paramilitary program, but said the Nigerian army has set up a checkpoint in the area. “But the community has become deserted,” he said. “Most of the residents have fled.”
His parents have stayed in Kaiama, struggling to leave behind 35 years of memories and investment. Adisa said the residents there still live in fear. When a rumor of another attack hit the community, he recalled that “the whole town scattered—everyone was running. You can’t guarantee your safety in Kaiama. It takes [courage] to live there now.”
Though Adisa expressed relief that the army had recovered the February kidnapping victims, he was disappointed it took so long.
“It felt like there was no urgency—like these were villagers who no one cared about,” he said. “It was disheartening.”
