NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — When gunmen stormed villages near Makurdi in Nigeria’s Benue state last year, Pastor Emmanuel Ochefu said the attack felt personal.
“They came at night, shouting and burning homes,” said Ochefu, who leads a small Pentecostal church outside the city and spoke with RNS by phone. “Most of the people killed were Christians. We cannot pretend that our faith is not part of why we are targeted.”
Nigeria was the first country mentioned in the introduction of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s annual report that was released on Wednesday (March 4), describing its “terrifying crisis of religious violence” and connecting it to the politics of the country. “Nigeria’s religious freedom environment is contextually unique in terms of its violent and complex perfect storm of religious, political, social, and economic factors, but it is representative of the alarming persistence of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) violations that continue to plague millions of people across the globe,” reads the report from the independent bipartisan agency. The report details sacrifices of many thousands of “innocents on the altar of religious bigotry” and mass abductions that have devastated religious communities in the north and central regions of the country. In addition to extremist violence the commission says is religiously motivated, it also points to “corr …
