Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 5.5% (83 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 0%
• Availability Heuristic - 3.4% (52 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 3.8% (58 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 1.7% (26 hits)
• Overconfidence Bias - 1.5% (23 hits)
• Framing Effect - 2.6% (39 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 5.2% (79 hits)
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
• Optimism Bias - 9.7% (147 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 1.2% (18 hits)

Article text

The Terror Network Slaughtering Nigerian Christians Has Escaped America’s Blacklist

Experts and policy change-makers tell the Daily Caller that the Nigerian and U.S. governments are failing to confront the primary threat responsible for the killing of Christians in Nigeria.

Between 2020 and 2025, more than 22,800 Christians were killed, and nearly 16,000 more were abducted in Nigeria, according to a new report by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa.

The report found that the group responsible for most of those attacks is not the one drawing the primary focus of either the Nigerian government or the Trump administration.

That group, the Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM), is responsible for 44 percent of civilian killings during that period, according to the Observatory.

Yet U.S. and Nigerian counterterrorism operations remain focused on the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and Boko Haram, which together account for just 12 percent of civilian killings.

Mark Lipdo, a Nigerian national and founder of the Stefano Foundation, which works with Christian survivors of persecution, said that although he has worked with U.S. officials across the political spectrum, Republicans were the ones who took his warnings seriously.

“We were hopeful that now that Republicans are reigning, we will have results,” Lipdo said, adding that “The unfortunate thing is that the Republicans are targeting the wrong people, the wrong direction.”

Lipdo shared a 2026 Stefano Foundation report with the Caller documenting attacks since 2001.

While the report estimated that ISWAP and Boko Haram have been the largest contributors to Nigerian terrorism over the past 25 years, Lipdo agreed that today “the most lethal threat to Nigerian existence now are the Fulani.”

The Fulani are an ethnic group with more than 7.6 million people in Nigeria alone and another 11 million across West Africa and the Sahel, according to the Stefano Foundation report.

They include neighbors, farmers, imams, and even former presidents.

But after being introduced to Islam leading into the 17th century, some embraced a radical jihadist interpretation, and when the Fulani Caliphate was emboldened by the British in the 19th century, the predecessor of what is now known as FEM began to emerge.

The result was a group more radical and far deadlier than ISWAP and Boko Haram, with 11,000 Muslims killed either in the crossfire or for being deemed too moderate by Islamic radicals, according to the Observatory’s report.

The report also includes a map suggesting that government counterterrorism efforts are concentrated around, rather than in, the areas where the most Christians are being killed and where the FEM stages most of its attacks.

Lipdo said the FEM and other radical groups are now appeased by state leaders, suggesting that appeals to blasphemy laws in defense of murder are commonplace as Christians find very little representation in government.

Christians make up 43 percent of the population, with the majority found in the south of the country, while the Muslim majority, at 56 percent, primarily resides in the north, according to Pew Research.

A majority of the conflict and killings are found in the country’s Middle Belt, where northern extremists raid peaceful villages consisting of Christians and moderate Muslims.

Despite this thin majority, Sharia law plays an increasingly large role in federal, civil, and several state laws.

Judd Saul, head of the Christian advocacy group Equipping the Persecuted and the on-the-ground news site Truth Nigeria, takes it a step further, telling the Caller the Nigerian government is complicit in the killings because the country’s military, police, and security apparatus are embedded with Fulanis.

Saul said this pattern presents itself as intelligence leaders ignore reliable threat warnings gathered by Truth Nigeria through vigilant locals.

He also said there are countless accounts of the army fleeing moments before a village is attacked.

Unlike the Nigerian government, Saul believes President Donald Trump’s intentions to intervene on behalf of Nigerian Christians are genuine, but that the Nigerian government is giving him bad information.

Truth Nigeria and CNN previously reported that Trump’s “powerful and deadly” Christmas Day strike had actually hit an empty field, resulting in no deaths.

Saul also told the Caller at the time that the strike had only targeted the ISIS-aligned Lakurawa, which he estimated was responsible for just 5 percent of Christian deaths, and did little more than benefit its competitors, the FEM and Boko Haram.

The Christmas strike, carried out in coordination with the Nigerian government, marked the climax of Trump’s mission to stop the killing of Christians in the country.

He launched the effort on Halloween night, declaring Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern and inviting Republican West Virginia Rep.

Riley Moore to “immediately look into this matter and report back to me.”

Moore took that charge seriously, joining a delegation to Nigeria before returning to report his findings to the president.

“Fulani Islamic militants are guilty of committing a large portion of the horrific acts of persecution and violence against Christians in Nigeria,” Moore told the Caller in a statement, adding that he has long maintained the FEM has killed more Nigerian Christians than Boko Haram or ISWAP.

Moore also pointed to the Department of State’s annual funding bill, which requires that a portion of the funding be used for “investigations and prosecutions of violence committed by Fulani militia groups, jihadist terror groups, and criminal gangs.”

“I remain committed to ensuring the full scope of the violence perpetrated by Fulani militants is dealt with,” Moore said.

“America is a Christian nation, and we must continue standing with our brothers and sisters in Christ who are persecuted for their faith while holding every terrorist group responsible for these atrocities fully accountable.”

Another recent step, also referenced by Moore, is the White House’s United States Counterterrorism Strategy, signed by Trump in May.

Among other things, the strategy states that the U.S. has two goals in Africa: preventing jihadi groups from establishing a base of operations from which they could attack the U.S. and its interests, and “protect Christians, who have been slaughtered at the hands of these Jihadi groups.”

With protecting Christians serving as the second U.S. counterterrorism goal in Africa, how could the Trump administration miss such a significant blind spot?

Scott Morgan, a D.C.-based security consultant with Red Eagle Enterprises and writer at Confused Eagle, said it may simply be a branding problem.

Unlike ISWAP, which is directly tied to ISIS, or Boko Haram, which bombed a United Nations building in 2011 and had “perfected plans” to attack an American embassy, FEM has kept its acts of terrorism local.

That has allowed the militants to avoid being designated an FTO, unlike the other groups.

The designation is placed by the State Department and is reserved for foreign groups that engage in terrorism against U.S. nationals or against America’s interests.

Once designated, it becomes a tool for fighting the organization by making it unlawful to support the group, enabling the swift freezing of funds and heightening public awareness of the terrorist organization — as well as opening the door to a number of military responses.

Morgan said it may take something even more drastic — something directly threatening U.S. interests — to capture Trump’s full attention and earn FEM a spot on the FTO list.

Otherwise, Morgan suggested FEM’s best chance of being designated is through legislation specifically directing Trump to do so, such as the bill sponsored by Republican New Jersey Rep.

Chris Smith.

Smith told the Caller that his bill, the Nigeria Religious Freedom and Accountability Act of 2026, not only calls on the Secretary of State to determine whether FEM qualifies for an FTO designation, but also launches investigations to hold networks accountable for supporting these groups and expands technical assistance and counterterrorism cooperation with the Nigerian government.

“For too long, these terrorist attacks have devastated vulnerable communities with impunity,” Smith said.

“The United States must use every available counterterrorism tool to confront violent militias, protect innocent civilians, and strengthen our partnership with Nigeria to defeat organizations that threaten regional stability and, ultimately, American security.”

Smith told the Caller that he led the congressional effort to designate Boko Haram as an FTO under the resistant Obama administration and is now determined to use that same effort against the FEM, which he says meets the statutory criteria for designation under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

When asked why FEM has not been designated an FTO despite meeting those qualifications and the criteria outlined in the new Counterterrorism Strategy, a State Department spokesperson told the Caller that “as a matter of policy, the State Department does not preview such actions,” adding that the U.S. is “committed to using all appropriate diplomatic tools to protect Christians in Nigeria.”

The department said both governments have jointly developed a framework for addressing U.S. concerns regarding the persecution of Christians in Nigeria but that it does not have “further details to publicly offer regarding those diplomatic discussions at this time.”

Quoting Trump, the State Department said the “United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria.”

The Nigerian Ministry of Defence did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.