Inside Nigeria, Parolin’s words resonated with those who live with the consequences of the conflict. Reverend Joseph Hayab, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Northern Nigeria, said the killings have long since crossed religious lines.

“These terrorists moved beyond just killing Christians and started killing virtually everybody.

“Mosques have also come under attack, and they kill Muslims who do not agree with them,” he said.

Similar position was also canvassed by renowned priest, Bishop Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Rev. Father Matthew Kukah, while speaking Tuesday at the launch of the ACIN 2025 World Report on Religious Freedom in the World.

The report which covers the state of Religious Freedom around the entire world between Jan 2023 and December 2024 shows more than 5.4 billion living today in countries without religious freedom.

At the gathering, Kukah said re-designating Nigeria as a country of concern would do the country more harm than good. 

He said, while there might be some challenges arising from the activities of some criminal elements masquerading as proponents of Islam, “we carry out our religious services with no molestations.”

From the Muslim community, the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, has repeatedly cautioned that there is no genocide against any group in Nigeria.

He warned that careless language and imported labels could inflame tension and undo years of interfaith peace-building.

Khalid Aliyu, a professor and Secretary General of Jama’atu Nasril Islam, has said the same that criminals should be treated as criminals, not as representatives of any faith. Together, they paint a picture more complex than the one exported abroad.

…Clarifying Parolin’s position

Marta Petrosillo, author of Aid to the Church in Need’s Religious Freedom Report whose report was used by some lobbyist to counter the Cardinal, later clarified that Parolin’s comments had been taken out of context.

In her interview on EWTN, she said Cardinal Parolin’s speech was one of the strongest defences of religious freedom, and it also recognised the layered social and economic causes of Nigeria’s insecurity.

The report itself recorded violations across faiths, noting that both Christians and Muslims who reject extremist ideology are being targeted. That nuance, however, was quickly drowned out in Washington.

For months, lobbyists tied to the self-styled Biafra Republic Government-in-Exile, an affiliate of the proscribed IPOB began citing Nigeria as a country persecuting Christians.

Public filings under the US Department of Justice show that Moran Global Strategies is registered to represent that group. Its leader, Simon Ekpa, was convicted in Finland this year for terrorism-related offences linked to deadly attacks in Nigeria’s South-East mostly against Christians. Yet, in Washington, the same network funds efforts under the banner of religious freedom and self-determination.

Those words now appear almost verbatim in congressional briefings from US congressmen including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is said to have met with the group’s representatives, and press statements.

The pattern is unmistakable: a proscribed group using paid lobbying to recast its armed campaign against Christians as a moral crusade for Christians.

By turning terrorism into advocacy, it becomes easier to attract sympathy, funding, and foreign political cover. Independent data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project show that over seven thousand Nigerians were killed in violent incidents in the past year.

That is about 319,000 deaths less than the number of those killed by gun violence in the US in 2025 alone. The dead in Nigeria include Christians, Muslims, and those of no faith.

…Reasons for attacks

Most attacks were driven by local resource disputes, criminal gangs, Sahel terrorism and manipulation. To call that a “Christian genocide,” as some lobby groups like MGS do, is to erase the wider truth of shared suffering.

The Vatican’s message, far from political, was moral. It called for empathy without distortion. Nigerian faith leaders have made the same appeal.

Across Plateau, Kaduna, and Niger states, Christian and Muslim groups continue joint peace initiatives, rarely noticed by the international press. Their work is slow and human, grounded in community rather than ideology. Those who profit from inflamed narratives have no patience for that kind of truth.

They rely on foreign outrage to raise funds and on simplistic headlines to sustain relevance. In that economy, suffering becomes strategy, and faith becomes a tool of influence.

Cardinal Parolin’s statement was not a denial of persecution, but a defence of proportion. Every life lost in Nigeria, be they Christian, Muslim, or otherwise, carries the same value. To frame the entire crisis as the persecution of one faith is to trade truth for convenience and compassion for politics.

Nigeria’s conflict was never a holy war. It is a human one. And until the world learns to see it that way, the merchants of distortion will keep finding buyers.

…Danger of mischaracterisation – Fani-Kayode

Also in a piece, a former aviation minister, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, said the “sad reality of Nigeria is not a “Christian genocide” but the genocide of BOTH Christians and Muslims by a handful of savage and barbaric terrorist militias that falsely claim to be Muslims, but that do not in actual fact represent any fait. They represent only Satan, their insatiable bloodlust and sadistic, depraved, delusional, psychotic and psychopathic disposition.”

“There is no one in Nigeria who has spoken up for the rights of Christians, against their marginalisation and persecution, and warned about the reality and dangers of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamist terror, more than I have done over the last 30 years.

“Whether it be the sharia debates, the debate on the secularity of the Nigerian State, the debate on the plight of Christians in Northern Nigeria or the debate on ethnic and religious hegemony and domination, I have been deeply involved and invested in these matters right from the beginning.

“In each of these prolonged and often acrimonious and volatile debates, I have played a leading role and held my corner.

“This places me in a unique position and gives me the ability to speak with authority about the ongoing debate on whether or not what we are witnessing in Nigeria today is indeed a “Christian genocide,” he said.

According to him, “there is no doubt that Christians are being targeted and slaughtered in massive numbers in Nigeria. No one can deny that. It is a reality that we as Christians have lived with for many years.

“What needs to be understood, however, is that in the last 15 years, as many Muslims have been targeted and slaughtered by the same group of heartless terrorists as well.

“To mischaracterise what is going on in our nation as a “Christian genocide” is a knee jerk and emotional reaction to a very complex and profound problem.

“It is an eloquent testimony to the sordid and divisive disinformation, misinformation and falsehood that those who insist on describing it in such terms have resorted to.

“It is a gross, perfidious and unforgivable mischaracterisation of the facts on the ground, a Goebellian misrepresentation of reality, and a perverse inversion of the truth.”

“It is also a specious, simplistic, shallow and flawed perspective, which is deeply rooted in ignorance, mischief, malevolence, malice, deceit and intellectual dishonesty, which does not in any way define the very real problems or provide a lasting solution to the monumental challenges that Nigerian Christians are facing.”

“This is designed to divide us and pave the way for a well-orchestrated and carefully scripted attempt to destabilise our nation, thrust us into a volatile season and cycle of mutual suspicion, sectarian violence and calumny, and set us up for an unconstitutional regime change before or by 2027,” the former presidential spokesman added.

To the US and members of the international community, he said: “To send arms to the Nigerian government to assist in our fight against the terrorists is one thing and would, of course, be a welcome and laudable initiative and development, but to send arms and private mercenary armies from the West to fight for Christians in our country and kill our Muslim brothers, or for Christian communities to receive arms directly from the Americans, whilst the Muslims are bombed out of existence by Western jets, is madness and an open invitation to chaos and fratricidal butchery in Nigeria.

“It would indeed mark the end of our country as we know it and the beginning of a civil war, which will last for the next 50 years and which will have cataclysmic consequences for the Nigerian people, the West African sub region, the African continent, and indeed much of the world.

“Such insane and provocative rhetoric from the likes of Prince and Moore must cease forthwith. They do not love our country more than we do and we must not allow them to light a fire or ignite a bomb that will consume us all,” he added.

He agreed that Nigeria is “a nation at war and the Federal Government must do far more by breaking the ranks of the terrorists with an iron fist, ripping out their hearts, killing them in even larger numbers than they are already doing and by effectively, courageously and vigorously countering the American and Zionist-sponsored “Christian genocide in Nigeria” propaganda and disinformation campaign that is spreading like wild-fire throughout the world.

“We must commend and encourage them in their endeavours. However much more needs to be done.”