By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner
Two of Africa’s largest and heterogenous states, Nigeria and Sudan, are experience massive internal violence.
Nigeria’s population of 220 million is split almost equally between Christians and Muslims. Since 2009, Islamist extremists in northern Nigeria have destroyed more than 18,000 churches and killed over 50,000 Christians nationwide. And another five million have been displaced within the country.
Who is doing this? The country has long faced insecurity from the Boko Haram extremist group, which seeks to establish its radical interpretation of Islamic law and has also targeted Muslims it deems not devout enough. They have killed tens of thousands of people since being founded in 2002.
Though Western media coverage of the persecution of Nigerian Christians has been sparse, that may be changing. U.S. President Donald Trump on Nov. 1 ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria as he stepped up his criticism that the government is failing to rein in the persecution of Christians. “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria,” Trump posted on social media.
The warning came after Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had earlier pushed back after Trump announced that he was designating Nigeria “a country of particular concern” for allegedly failing to rein in the persecution of Christians.
Tinubu insisted that the characterization of Nigeria as a religiously intolerant country does not reflect the national reality. “Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so,” he stated. “Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”
But U.S. defence secretary Pete Hegseth Nov. 21 called on the government to “take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians, during talks with the Nigerian national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu.
Faith-based organizations are amplifying claims of a Christian “genocide.” They point to the wave of attacks on churches and Chrisitan communities across the central and northern parts of the country -- though others assert that the violence cuts across faiths and that it is driven as much by land disputes, climate change, poverty and weak governance as by religion itself.
Security, especially in the predominantly Muslim north, has been deteriorating for years. About 10,000 people have been killed and hundreds abducted since Tinubu became president in mid-2023. More than 7,000 Nigerian Christians have been slaughtered by Islamists so far in 2025. The violence has pushed as many as three million people out of their homes.
Meanwhile, of all the wars raging across the world right now, Sudan’s is the deadliest. More than 150,000 people are dead. Twelve million have been displaced. Women have been raped and children are conscripted as soldiers. Mass graves line Khartoum’s streets. Of the population of 51 million, around 14 million have been displaced. Famine is widespread, as is cholera and other diseases.
The conflict involves the government-controlled Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as “Hemedti,” who leads the broader Janjaweed coalition, notorious due to the Darfur genocide earlier in the 21st century.
The RSF are allegedly supported by arms deliveries from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through neighbouring Chad. The UAE denies the allegations, though evidence in the form of UAE-produced arms indicate the opposite. The SAF, on the other hand, is backed by Egypt and Qatar.
The Janjaweed militia became known for its extreme violence in Darfur between 2003 and 2005. At the time, the Arab-origin militia of then-president Omar al-Bashir killed around 300,000 civilians, whom they considered not Arab but African. The UN and many states determined that genocidal acts were committed in early 2003.
After recently seizing the city of El Fasher, the RSF’s territorial control now covers Darfur and parts of the south, whereas the SAF controls the country's capital, Khartoum, and the country’s north and centre. International organizations have demanded that the RSF establish humanitarian corridors for the approximately 177,000 people who have been unable to leave El Fasher.
In March, the RSF and other armed groups formed the Sudan Founding Alliance (TASIS). It has been tasked with establishing a “Government of Peace and Unity” " for Darfur and parts of the south where the RSF holds sway.
The French author Bernard-Henri Lévy, who has reported from the country, on Nov. 5 warned that Sudan’s war could destabilize the entire region into a geopolitical crisis stretching from the Red Sea to Libya. “In this region of the planet where great civilizations intersect and where, today, the empires of death make common cause, Sudan holds a distinct and essential geopolitical place. To refuse to hear what is happening there would be not only a disgrace, but also a mistake.”
Prime minister Mark Carney brought up the issue of UAE arms sales to the RSP forces while on a visit there in November, though groups like the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights question Ottawa’s friendly relations with the UAE. Control over gold-mining operations and trade has become a central driver of the civil war, the report said, with 50 to 80 per cent of the 70-million tonnes produced annually smuggled abroad, principally to the UAE.
