A Christian Genocide? What To Know About What’s Happening In Nigeria

SmartHERNews

Jenna Lee

News, Education

4.9 • 660 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From President Trump … to the Secretary of War … to performer Nicki Minaj?

Many high-profile voices in recent weeks have highlighted the current state of affairs in Nigeria - specifically what the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations describes as “the persecution of Christians.” This week, the House Foreign Affairs committee will hold a hearing to discuss the Trump administration’s recent designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). With these headlines swirling, war correspondent Hollie McKay joins us to work through what to know and why it matters.
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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody. We're back with Holly McKay. She is a war correspondent, journalist, writer,
0:10.7	author, mom, extraordinaire, wears a lot of different hats. And I was talking to Holly the other
0:16.7	day because of a news story that I'm sure you've heard about, but maybe haven't heard that
0:21.6	much about. And that is reference to the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. The president of the
0:29.1	United States was talking about it on social media. You have the secretary of the Department of
0:34.1	War talking about it as well. Some lawmakers are speaking out about this,
0:38.1	but what is actually happening there? So, Holly, you've, I'm sure, seen these headlines and you've
0:42.5	been in touch with people in the region. What do we need to know about what's happening in Nigeria?
0:47.5	Where do we even start with this story? Yeah, so there's a lot of conflicting headlines,
0:52.0	and I think this is a case where multiple points of view can be correct, depending on how you look at the data.
0:58.6	So certainly the Christian population in Nigeria has suffered horrific violence, but the argument that can also be made is that much of the country has too.
1:08.8	So the country is about 50-50, sort of 50% Christian, 50% Nigerian,
1:15.1	but they tend to live in different parts of the country. And so the area sort of is what they
1:20.1	call the middle belt, and that is where it's mainly the Christian population. And so really, I would
1:24.4	say over the past two decades has faced sort of multiple armed conflicts.
1:30.3	You have Boko Haram insurgency, which is basically, you know, plundered a lot of it, plus just a general lot of banditry and that has really affected Christians.
1:39.9	But that seems to have ramped up even more sort of over the last couple of years.
1:44.3	And particularly with Boko Haram, being an ISIS affiliate, has killed more than 10,000 people
1:50.3	just sort of in that area alone.
1:52.7	And so that's sort of where you're hearing a lot of claims of genocide against Christians,
1:58.5	a lot of kidnapping for ransom, burning of villages, and that is all
2:03.7	happening. And if you look at sort of statistics from some of the NGOs that have really kind of
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