The study is titled "Crisis in the Middle Belt: Religious Persecution and Security Failure in Nigeria." It comes from Equipping the Persecuted, a nonprofit in Sioux City, Iowa. It focuses on the Middle Belt, the band of farming country across central Nigeria that includes Plateau and Benue states, where Christian villages sit beside lands that herders cross and claim.
The authors conclude that most of the documented violence against Christian farming communities appears to be religiously motivated and carried out through organized militant networks. They say Fulani militant actors caused more of these deaths than Boko Haram and its offshoot, the Islamic State West Africa Province, combined. Other tallies of the same months give lower totals, and counting the dead in remote villages is hard work. Every count agrees on the main thing: the killing is steady and it is large.
The numbers keep coming in. Gunmen killed a pastor and a church aide in Plateau State in recent days. Last year President Trump put Nigeria back on the list of Countries of Particular Concern over the killing of Christians, and Americans of both parties have pressed Abuja to protect its people. The Nigerian government has long rejected the idea that Christians are being targeted for their faith, and it describes the violence as a wider security crisis. The study argues that the state has failed to stop it, and that few attackers are ever prosecuted.
Behind the number
Sixteen point eight a day is a hard figure to hold in the mind. So think of it this way. Since breakfast, someone's father has been cut down in a field. Since lunch, a mother has not come home from market. Before supper, a boy on the way to church is left lying in the road. Every one of them had a name and a bed and a place at a table. Then the next 86 minutes begin.
Statistics have a way of numbing us. A hundred deaths is a tragedy, we say, and four thousand is a headline. But the Lord does not count in totals. He knows the sparrow that falls, and He numbers the hairs of your head. Not one of those 4,216 has been lost to His sight.
"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints." (Psalm 116:15)
Read that slowly. It does not say the death of saints is painless, or that it is fair, or that it ought to be waved away. It says it is precious. The God who made them keeps their account, and He keeps it perfectly. No unmarked grave in Plateau State is unknown to Him. No widow's weeping goes unheard.
Our Lord told His people plainly that this would come.
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:10)
That is not a promise that the world will be kind. It is a promise that the world's hatred is not the last word. The believer who dies for Christ in a Nigerian field is not defeated. He has been called home by the King he would not deny.
What the rest of us owe them
That does not let the safe and comfortable off the hook, my friend. Scripture gives us an instruction, and it reads like an order.
"Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body." (Hebrews 13:3)
Remember them. Say their country's name at your table. Do not let a distant land turn into a rumor. Ask your own elected officials, whether in Washington or in your state, whether they are pressing for protection of these believers. Civil government holds the sword for a reason, and a government that will not defend the innocent has forgotten what the sword is for.
And ask yourself an honest question. If your faith cost you what it costs a farmer in the Middle Belt, would you still hold it? Many Nigerians have answered that question with their lives, and they answered yes. The Christ they trusted is the same Christ who died for you and rose again on the third day. He is the only one who can promise a man that death is not the end. Come to Him, and do not put it off. None of us is guaranteed another 86 minutes.