Executive Summary
The designation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) by the United States, centred solely on religious-freedom violations, is factually inadequate and analytically misleading. Nigeria’s crisis is far more expansive: it encompasses systemic and structural violence – extrajudicial killings, state complicity, economic disenfranchisement, forced displacement, and collapse of the social contract. This paper argues that the U.S. response, by limiting its focus to religion, fails to address the full architecture of oppression in Nigeria (USCIRF, 2025). The recommendations here call for a broadened policy response, commensurate with the scale of suffering.
1. Introduction and Context
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, finds itself in a deep and multifaceted crisis. The dominant narrative in many foreign policies isolates religious freedom violations as a category distinct from other forms of rights abuses. Yet in Nigeria the boundaries blur: armed groups exploit religious identity, state forces act with impunity, and economic policy and neglect inflict mass harm. The legal and institutional architecture there fails to protect citizens, and in some cases collaborates in their subjugation (Human Rights Measurement Initiative, 2025).
As of December 2024, Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) registered over 2 million complaints of human-rights violations for the year (National Human Rights Commission, 2025). In Q1 2025 alone, 621,414 complaints were recorded (Ochojila, 2025). Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimate internal displacement at 3.4 million people by end-2023 (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2024; National Bureau of Statistics, 2024). Furthermore, the country scores a mere 3.2/10 for “Safety from the State” in the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) dataset (Human Rights Measurement Initiative, 2025). These data signal not isolated incidents but a crisis of governance: a hostile state-citizen relationship at scale.
2. The Architecture of Violence
2.1 Extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and impunity
The state’s security forces have repeatedly been implicated in violent operations that result in civilian deaths without subsequent accountability (NHRC, 2025). For example, reports from protests in August 2024 show that at least 24 demonstrators were killed by the Nigeria Police Force firing live ammunition, often aimed at the head or torso—indicating intent to kill rather than disperse (Ochojila, 2025). Such acts, unpunished, normalise the use of lethal force against citizens and dismantle the rule of law.
2.2 Forced displacement as structural violence
Internal displacement is a core indicator of structural violence: communities lose homes, livelihoods, identity and security, often without redress. Nigeria’s 2023 figure of 3.4 million IDPs (by IDMC) reveals how large segments of the population are forcibly uprooted, not as isolated victims but as systemic collateral in a security, economic and governance failure (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2024). The causes—insurgency, communal violence, herder-farmer clashes—are symptomatic of a state unable or unwilling to protect its citizens (Jimoh, 2024).
2.3 Economic disenfranchisement and rights denial
Violence in Nigeria is not only kinetic. The destruction of agricultural output, especially in areas like Benue State, demonstrates how insecurity translates into economic collapse (National Bureau of Statistics, 2024). A peer-reviewed study found that a 1% increase in insecurity led to 0.211% decline in crop output and 0.311% decline in livestock output. Concurrently, freedom from discrimination and economic, social and cultural rights violations are increasing: the NHRC’s 2024 dashboard records rising complaints in these domains (National Human Rights Commission, 2025).
2.4 Religious-identity violence embedded in wider state failure
The focus on religion rightly highlights attacks on places of worship and blasphemy laws (for example, 12 state governments enforce such laws per U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) data) (USCIRF, 2025). But isolating religious violations alone obscures how these attacks are intertwined with communal identity, land competition, political marginalisation and state security practices. Ethnonationalist violence in Nigeria uses religious identity as a vector for broader violence (Human Rights Measurement Initiative, 2025).
3. Why the Religious-Only Lens Is Inadequate
The current U.S. designation focuses on religious-freedom violations (USCIRF, 2025). That is necessary but insufficient. When the violence against Nigerians is simultaneous across multiple axes—security, economics, governance—any policy that treats only one axis will fail to protect lives or drive reform.
First, the religious category ignores widespread violence that is not obviously faith-based: banditry, herder-farmer conflict, insurgency, which nonetheless produces mass harm. For example, the displacement of over a million households in 2023 was attributed 81.2% to Boko Haram insurgency and 16.2% to farmer-herder clashes—not strictly religious persecution (Jimoh, 2024).
Second, the religious frame allows state actors to deflect accountability: by blaming non-state actors (terrorists, extremists) for religious attacks, the state avoids scrutiny of its own internal operations, its identity as perpetrator or facilitator (Ochojila, 2025). When police shoot protesters or the military detains women fleeing Boko Haram and abuses them, these are state actions, not merely failures (NHRC, 2025).
Third, economic and social rights violations are seldom remedied by religious-freedom mechanisms. If millions are displaced, if livelihoods vanish, if civilians are killed with impunity, the matter is not only church vs mosque but citizen vs state. Recognition of this is crucial for a holistic strategy (Human Rights Measurement Initiative, 2025).
4. Implications and Ramifications
The consequences of viewing Nigeria’s crisis through a narrow religious prism are profound (USCIRF, 2025):
- Policy responses will under-address the scale of suffering: aid flows may ignore displaced-persons camps, economic reconstruction, justice for extrajudicial killings (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2024).
- Perpetrators outside the explicitly religious context may evade sanctions or oversight (Human Rights Measurement Initiative, 2025).
- Victims suffer from a fragmented human-rights response rather than an integrated accountability mechanism (NHRC, 2025).
- The legitimacy of foreign policy responses is weakened: citizens may view them as skewed, selective, or politicised, undermining trust (Ochojila, 2025).
5. Recommendations
For the U.S. and broader international community to engage credibly, the following steps are essential (USCIRF, 2025):
- Broaden the designation criteria: The “Country of Particular Concern” status should explicitly incorporate mass human-rights violations beyond religion—such as forced displacement, extrajudicial killings, economic rights failures (Human Rights Measurement Initiative, 2025).
- Condition security assistance on accountability: Aid to Nigerian security forces must be contingent on transparent investigations into killings, disappearances and detentions (NHRC, 2025).
- Support institutional reform and monitoring: Strengthen the NHRC and civil-society organisations with independent funding and international oversight to ensure systemic reform rather than superficial reporting (Ochojila, 2025).
- Expand humanitarian and development aid to structural victims: Prioritise IDPs, communities suffering from agricultural collapse, and regions neglected by central governance (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2024; National Bureau of Statistics, 2024).
- Ensure targeted sanctions and travel bans on individuals credibly implicated in structural violence, not only those who violate religious-freedom norms (USCIRF, 2025).
6. Conclusion
In Nigeria, the crisis is not neatly compartmentalised into religious persecution. It is a sprawling architecture of state-citizen betrayal: armed violence by both non-state and state actors; economic strangulation; forced displacement; mass complaints (Human Rights Measurement Initiative, 2025). The U.S. focus on religious freedom is important—but alone it understates the magnitude of the crisis and helps perpetuate impunity for the full spectrum of abuses. A truly effective policy must name the full problem, target the full system, and engage the full spectrum of victims. Until that happens, the designation remains a symbolic gesture, insufficient for the scale of devastation (USCIRF, 2025).
Bibliography
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