Survival Dispatch ThreatWire × Righteous Savages
October 22, 2025 — Abuja / Washington, D.C.
🧠 BLUF
The slaughter of Christians in Nigeria is not a fringe claim—it is a sustained, targeted reality documented by church networks, NGOs, and local officials, even as much of the media and influencer class downplay or ignore it.
Disputes over the legal word “genocide” should not obscure operational facts: villages leveled, churches burned, congregants massacred, and clergy murdered.
Some datasets undercount religion-targeted killings or avoid faith attribution, which makes the crisis look “less sectarian” on paper than it is on the ground. That gap is being exploited to dismiss alarm.
While lawyers debate thresholds, communities need protection now—and policymakers need to treat this as an ongoing campaign against Christians with complex drivers but clear patterns of targeted harm.
Keep reading below …
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📡 CONTEXT
An American fact-finding team recently asserted that mass killings since 2009 amount to genocide, citing totals on the order of ~185,000 killed (≈125,000 Christians and ~60,000 moderate Muslims). Catholic outlets and Nigerian church leaders have amplified those findings, urging the world to stop minimizing what is happening to Christian communities.
At the same time, widely used conflict datasets (e.g., ACLED) show very high overall civilian lethality but far smaller religion-attributed counts, which some commentators seize on to claim there’s “no genocide.” That methodological gap—events logged without a clear faith tag—helps explain the disconnect between local testimony and topline dashboards.
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⚠️ THREAT PROFILE
What’s actually happening, stripped of spin:
Documented, multi-year mass killings of Christians. Nigerian NGO Intersociety reported ~52,250 Christians killed since 2009; ministry and diocesan sources echo thousands killed this year alone.
Perpetrators & methods: jihadist insurgents (Boko Haram/ISWAP) and militia factions in farmer–herder and communal conflicts conduct raids, village burnings, church attacks, mass kidnappings, and executions—often selecting Christian targets or locations.
Local officials’ warnings: Plateau State’s governor and other leaders have publicly called the pattern “genocide,” pleading for national action—signals the international press largely buries or frames as “disputed.”
Dataset caveat: ACLED (Jan 2020–Sept 2025) records 20,409 civilian deaths but far fewer events explicitly tagged as faith-targeted (e.g., 317 Christian, 417 Muslim), which analysts use to argue against the legal label—even as church networks document far higher faith-targeted totals.
Legal threshold vs. practical reality: The U.N. Genocide Convention requires proven intent to destroy a group—a notoriously high bar. The debate over that bar must not become an excuse to ignore an ongoing campaign of targeted mass violence.
🧍♂️ FOR EVERYDAY AMERICANS — WHAT TO DO (AID, ADVOCACY, SECURITY)
Don’t be gaslit by “no data” talking points: Follow church/NGO field reports alongside big datasets to see the whole picture. Share credible updates to break the silence loop.
Support on-the-ground resilience: Partner with vetted ministries and relief orgs that fund displacement aid, trauma care, and rapid repairs for destroyed churches and homes.
Push representatives: Ask Congress for targeted security assistance to threatened communities, sanctions on perpetrators, and pressure for transparent incident verification.
Church security at home: Use this as a wake-up call to harden local worship sites (access control, trained safety teams, comms plans, medical kits). (General best practice.)
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🧠 SDN ANALYSIS — JON WHEATON
When elites hedge behind the word “disputed,” Christians die in the silence. We can acknowledge complexity and call this what it is: a sustained pattern of targeted mass killing of Christians, documented by people burying the dead. The legal threshold for “genocide” is hard to prove; the moral threshold for action has long since been crossed.
Sound the alarm. Demand better data collection that doesn’t erase faith as a motive. Fund resilience. Pressure policymakers. Refuse to let sophisticated spreadsheets bury simple truth.
GodSpeed
Jon Wheaton
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