A Nigerian Catholic bishop standing in the breach to alert the world about Christian persecution in Benue State has drawn verbal attacks and escalating threats in recent weeks.

Bishop Wilfred Anagbe’s recent testimonies about Fulani militants killing or forcibly displacing Christian farmers and an ongoing campaign of Islamization in the country, sparked indignation from Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Spokesperson Kimembi Imomotomi Ebienfa asserted on March 14 that Anagbe’s remarks on March 12 in front of the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa contributes to “the recent wave of misinformation and misleading reports regarding the supposed targeting of Christians in Nigeria.” The government operative acknowledged that there are “security challenges confronting the nation.”

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Anagbe, who video-conferenced with The Catholic Register from Scotland, sharply rebuked the government’s unwillingness to acknowledge and confront the problem in its midst, which includes targeting houses of worship. 

“My diocese has lost about 15 parishes between 2018 and 2024,” said Anagbe, who became bishop of Makurdi in 2014. “Between 2015 and 2025 we have had 140-something priests kidnapped, some killed and some only regain their freedom after ransom has been paid. We’ve had churches destroyed — there have been a lot of attacks even on festive days.”

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reported on the 2024 Christmas Day massacre that took the lives of 47 Christians attending a service in Anwase in the Diocese of Gboko in Benue State. Adults and children were killed, and eight parish buildings — including the church and a clinic — were burned to the ground. 

Anagbe challenged the talking point that Christians are not specifically being targeted.

“If they are not targeted as Christians, let us look at the statistics of what has happened,” said Anagbe. “How many mosques have been destroyed vis-a-vis the Catholic churches or Christian churches that have been burned down? How many imams have been kidnapped?”

Anagbe has been accompanied by Fr. Remigus Ihyula on his travels to Washington and throughout the United Kingdom. On March 28 Ihyula received a message from an embassy in Abuja, Nigeria. The message transmitted to Ihyula warned that there “might be” an arrest warrant for Anagbe upon his return to Nigeria.

Ihyula weighed in on the threats.  

“What we have discovered is that there is a threat that has been placed on us, myself and bishop, and this threat is real and is imminent,” said Ihyula. “The purpose of this interview for him was that he should share this message clearly: he wants to go back, and he has the courage to go back, but it is prudent to say that people who speak about this thing are persecuted. For instance, the bishop has a target on his head.”

Anagbe said if “I am able to go back I will be happy as I would not want to be (out of Nigeria) during the Easter celebration, the Paschal Mystery.”

“It is better to go back. Somebody has to speak about the cause of truth. It is good for the nation and the world exactly what is happening. The truth has to be told.”

Threats began even hours before Anagbe spoke to Congress on March 12. He  received a call at 3 a.m. from a brother prelate who shared the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called and warned Anagbe had “better watch his words.”

Anagbe did not back down. He told U.S. policymakers that the “quest to Islamize the land appears high on the agenda of some of the powerful and influential Muslims in Nigeria,” a country with 238 million people split almost evenly between Muslims and Christians. The 60-year-old specifically imparted how Christian farmers are being driven off their fertile land by “militant Fulani herdsmen.”

“They steal and vandalize, they kill and boast about it, they kidnap and rape, and they enjoy total impunity from the elected authorities,” stated Anagbe on March 12. “None of them have been arrested and brought to justice.  This is supported by the corrupt system in which we operate, and the abject poverty among us, which allow the criminals to easily attract more recruits and prey on more victims.”

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Open Doors International says of the 4,476 Christians murdered worldwide for their faith in 2024, 3,100 of the killings happened in Nigeria — significantly more than any other place in the world combined. 

Notably, it was announced last month that Nigeria rose to sixth place in the Global Terrorism Index out of 66 countries.

Nina Shea, an international Christian religious freedom advocate who served on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, also presented before the committee.

The senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute detailed how the Fulani’s land-grabbing interests are advanced by two organizations: the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association and Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore. This cattle oligarchy arms militants with AK 47s and other advanced weaponry.

Shea’s testimony took aim at the characterization of Fulani aggression during former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, notably by former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his State Department. 

The 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom Report on Nigeria assembled by the State Department ated that some believe the farmer-herder crisis in Nigeria is driven by “ongoing competition over land and water resources” while others, including Christian religious leaders, stated that killings “were part of an organized effort to drive Christian farmers from their land.”

Blinken made climate change the centrepiece issue of his 2021 state visit to Nigeria, and he drew the ire of Christians for removing the “country of particular concern” religious persecution designation imposed on Nigeria during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first administration. 

The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference — COP 29 — also presented a narrative that “climate change has reduced the availability of natural resources in Nigeria, aggravating clashes between communities in Benue State.”

Shea critiqued these climate-driven accounts. 

“Their analysis was neo-Marxian in that these are not radicalized, fanatical Muslims killing defenceless Christians farming their land, but these are herders driven by scarcity to kill a farmer,” said Shea. “(Often) they didn’t record the religion of the victim and sometimes they would say, ‘they’re Christian, but this has nothing to do with religion. It is the herder killing the farmer.’ They didn’t look at motives, they looked at drivers and (determined) the driver was climate change.”

Anagbe knew the climate change talking point “was not true” and the Biden administration’s acceptance and promotion of that viewpoint emboldened the powers behind the Fulani. 

“For them to accept that was giving tacit approval, a go-ahead and a conspiracy of silence to do the killing that is still going on,” said Anagbe. “There was no reason for that.”

Shea’s testimony drew on survivor accounts collected by churches and journalists on the ground. Many survivors have shared that “attackers spoke Fulfulde and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ or expressed other religious sentiments as they killed.”

Anagbe, Ihyula and Shea all want to see Trump’s second administration reimpose the countries of particular concern designation on Nigeria, joining the 12 such designations on countries like Myanmar, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran and North Korea cited for engaging and tolerating “particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”

There is belief that the CPC label could deter some of the violence, spur the Nigerian government into action and perhaps even drastically reduce weapons shipments into the country. 

All parties are “encouraged” with the discussions ACN and other groups have had with Trump’s administration thus far, notably with Dan Dunham an Africa director on the National Security Council. 

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The White House is still in the process of building its Africa team. Massad Boulos, the father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Michael Boulos, was named on April 2 as a senior advisor for Africa and began a tour of Africa the next day.

Hungary, the country armed with the presidency of the European Union, sent its state secretary for the aid of persecuted Christians to Nigeria for a fact-finding visit earlier this month. The plight of persecuted Christians around the world is a central plank of Hungary’s EU agenda.