More than 30 people were killed in Benue State, Nigeria, as Islamist terrorists unleashed three days of violence against Christian communities.
The killings are just the latest massacre in what Nigerian church leaders have called a “genocide” of Nigerian Christians.
Barnabas Aid estimates that at least 45,000 Christians have been killed by Islamists in northern and Middle Belt Nigeria since 2009.
The scene in Anwase community, Benue State, where 13 people were killed and more than 20 houses burned down [Image credit: Kwande Photos Archive] 
Most of the deaths took place in Kwande Local Government Area (LGA), beginning on 3 February at Abande market where sixteen civilians and a police officer, Isaac Madu, were shot and killed by terrorists.
A further 13 were killed just three days later in the village of Anwase.
On the same day Fulani militia killed two residents of the Akpete community in Apa LGA, Matthew Ochanga and Isaac Adanu.
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Elsewhere in Benue State on Sunday 8 February, nine worshippers were abducted from an early morning prayer meeting by 25 men with weapons.
“They were speaking Fulfulde [the Fulani language] and chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they surrounded us,” said a member of the congregation who was able to escape.
Erasing Christianity from Nigeria
On a recent visit to Plateau, another Middle Belt state, the British author and journalist David Patrikarakos described a landscape of burned-out church buildings and “broken crosses”.
“It’s as though someone has tried to erase every visible sign of Christianity from this land,” writes Patrikarakos.
“In the face of all this,” he continues, “calling the violence here merely a ‘farmer-herder conflict’ … begins to sound like a diplomatic euphemism.”
Barnabas Aid supporters have provided for Christian communities suffering Islamist violence in northern and Middle Belt Nigeria
“We are being displaced,” Patrikarakos was told by Iliya Ayuba Fwangle, a local leader in the Christian Association of Nigeria, adding the need to make known “the genocide we Christians are experiencing here”.
According to a survivor of a May 2023 Fulani Islamist attack, “The churches are always their main target.”
Read more: Your gifts have blessed thousands of Nigerian Christians
Muslims are also among the victims of jihadist violence. Earlier this month, more than 160 people were slaughtered in two Muslim-majority villages of Kwara State, western Nigeria, reportedly because they refused to accept the authority of the Islamic State (IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh).
Yet Patrikarakos’s investigation confirms what Barnabas Aid project partners and contacts in Nigeria have long reported, that militants attack Christians villages “screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ and calling the Christians living there infidels”.
In December 2025, 27 Christians were abducted from a church and the village of Aiyetoro-Kiri in Kogi State. The attack left one worshipper dead. Two others died in captivity and a fourth after being released and hospitalised.
“If anybody is telling me that this is not genocide against Christians,” said village head Olusegun Durowaye, “I don’t know where you are getting your story from.”
How you can pray
Ask the Lord, who has won for His people the victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:57), to comfort those bereaved by these atrocities in Benue State. Pray that increased awareness of this persecution in Nigeria will lead to action to protect our brothers and sisters. Pray that there will be an end to Islamist terrorism and violent criminality, for the sake of all Nigerians.
