A House subcommittee met in Washington on Thursday, Nov. 12, to ask a hard question: has a year of American pressure done enough to stop the killing of Christians in Nigeria? The Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), convened the hearing under the title "One Year Later: Assessing Nigeria's Efforts to Protect Christians and Secure the Middle Belt."
It was Smith's 14th hearing on the subject. His 12th, held in November 2025, heard testimony from a Catholic bishop of Makurdi, in Nigeria's Benue State, whose diocese has buried far too many of its people. This year's session came after the administration redesignated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, the State Department's label for governments that tolerate or commit severe violations of religious freedom.
Smith told the panel that designation "is the beginning" but "not the end" of what is needed. He said that without it, Nigeria would have no incentive or pressure to try to lessen the violence. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) said he questions, along with many others, whether enough has been done.
The numbers put before the committee were grim. Testimony cited a religious-freedom watchdog's finding that Nigeria remains the world's deadliest place for Christians, accounting for 72 percent of faith-related killings worldwide. Human rights groups say more than 6,000 Christians have been killed or abducted in the country this year, a figure that could not be independently verified. Attacks have continued into November, with gunmen killing a pastor among four dead at a market in Benue State on Nov. 3, and a militia abducting about twenty people in Kaduna State the next day, according to advocacy groups tracking the violence.
Congress has already acted. The House passed a bill in July that would withhold foreign assistance to Nigeria until the government certifies it is taking effective steps to protect Christians. The State Department's own account holds that the violence springs from wider troubles, including banditry, terrorism and fights over land and resources, and that people of every faith suffer. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) argued that the administration gutted foreign aid, including hundreds of millions of dollars meant for Nigeria, and that this weakens the American hand.
Why a hearing room matters to a burned village
I do not expect a committee to settle what a farmer in Benue or a widow on the Plateau needs settled tonight. Policy is slow, and bullets are not. But I am glad the men and women of that committee kept the matter in front of the country. Fourteen hearings is not a hobby. It is a refusal to look away.
And looking away is the oldest temptation in the world. Statistics make it easy. Seventy-two percent is a number, and numbers do not weep. Behind every one of them is a man who went out to his field, a girl who was walking home, a pastor who stood up on Sunday and said what he believed anyway.
The Lord Jesus never promised His followers an easy road. He promised them a Savior. He told them plainly what the world would do to those who carry His name, and then He told them what waits on the far side of it.
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:10)
Notice that He did not say blessed are the safe, or blessed are the well-defended. He said blessed are the persecuted. The believer in a burned Nigerian village holds something no gunman can reach and no budget can cut. His name is written where the raiders cannot go.
That is a comfort to the suffering. It is a charge to the rest of us. The Scripture says to remember "them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yet members of the body" (Hebrews 13:3). Members of the same body. When a finger is crushed, the whole hand knows it. A Christian in Ohio and a Christian in Kaduna are not strangers. They share one Lord, one cross, and one empty tomb.
So honor the officials who press the matter, whatever their party, and pray that they press it with wisdom and courage. Our government bears the sword for a reason, and protecting the innocent is among the oldest of its duties. But the gospel does not wait on a vote. It goes into the villages that are still standing and the ones that are not, and it tells every frightened soul the same thing it has always told: death has lost its sting, and Christ is risen.
My friend, do not let the numbers go cold in your heart. Learn a name. Speak of them at your table. Give to those who carry relief to the displaced. And ask yourself whether you would hold fast to Christ if holding fast cost you everything, because for thousands of Nigerians that is no question at all. It is Tuesday.