In June 2026 the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) published its six-year study of killings and abductions in Nigeria, covering the period from October 2019 to September 2025. The study compiles incident-level data on the number of victims, their religious identity, the location of incidents, and the groups responsible. IIRF recommends it as the most comprehensive quantitative source currently available on religiously relevant violence in Nigeria.
The study’s central contribution is that it disaggregates victims by religious identity, something most reporting on Nigerian violence does not do. ORFA records 79,323 people killed in the six-year period, of whom 42,033 were civilians. Among civilian victims, 22,835 were Christians. Kaduna State, in the North West geopolitical zone, recorded the highest number of civilians killed. The report also records 34,773 civilian abductions in the same period: 15,932 Christians, 15,272 Muslims, 252 adherents of African Traditional Religion, and 3,317 victims whose religion could not be established.
Two further findings deserve attention. First, the report documents differences in how Christian and Muslim abductees are treated: Christian captives face harsher physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, higher ransom demands, and a greater likelihood of not being released even after ransom is paid. Second, the six-year series makes visible a shift over the period from violence by jihadist groups such as Boko Haram toward violence by Fulani ethnic militias. Because the figures behind both findings are set out in full, the report allows readers to follow the evidence for themselves.
IIRF recommends the report to researchers, policymakers, and advocates working on freedom of religion or belief in Nigeria and the wider Sahel. For researchers, it provides a victim-centered dataset with a consistent methodology over six years, which makes it usable for trend analysis and for comparison with other sources, including IIRF’s Violent Incidents Database, to which ORFA contributes. For policymakers and advocates, it supplies the documented figures needed to raise the religious dimension of the violence in national and international forums, where that dimension is too often absent from the discussion. The report is available from ORFA.