But in Just 4 Days 248 Fall to Terrorist Bullets Back Home
By Douglas Burton and Mike Odeh James
(Abuja) Nigeria’s First Lady joined thousands in Washington last Thursday to celebrate the Good News, but back home the news was as bad as ever.
First Lady and former Senator Oluremi (“Remi)”) Tinubu, touched down in Washington last Monday to launch a charm tour to the Hudson Institute, to sit downs with Administration officials, and dignified dinners with editors of the Hill. Her tour concluded with a shout out from President Donald Trump at Washington’s National Prayer Breakfast Thursday morning.
The former Nigerian senator and ordained Pentecostal preacher had come to Washington with a retinue of aides apparently to counter the rising bad press about her government’s complicity with Christian genocide. The First Lady brought her modified, silky version of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” to Pennsylvania Avenue.
And if her goal was to build solidarity with the Trump Administration, her reviews by Fox Digital and The Hill suggest she scored big time. “Nigeria’s First Lady Says US strikes were a ‘blessing,” welcomes collaboration with Trump,” cooed a Fox Digital headline.
The Hill reported that she saw divine intervention in the fact that President Trump has taken a special interest in the mounting deaths of Christians in Nigeria, and continuing dialogue and trade could only be for the good. Her 4-day tour in Washington was to “build relationships and clear up some misconceptions about religious freedom in Nigeria,” The Hill reported.
The biggest misconception? According to her, right-wing lawmakers were swayed by the idea that Christians were in the cross hairs of genocide, when in fact, both Muslims and Christians were falling victim to jihadist attacks. “There are cases of theft, banditry, kidnapping for ransom, all of those are all intertwined,” she told the Hill. “What we have to establish — we are talking about attacks on Christians — we have to realize that Nigeria also is an emerging economy,” she said. Got that? It’s all about economics, privation: no sectarian motivation.
She got that message trumpeted in a respectful 1,000-word interview with Fox Digital which reported Tinubu and her husband argue that the violence plaguing the country is real and severe, but “not limited to any one faith.”
“We live in Nigeria. We know the situation on the ground,” she assured Fox Digital.
But as Madam Tinubu did her best to put Nigeria’s best foot forward, her nation’s other foot kept dropping loudly.
A Tsunami of violence swept Africa’s most populous country in February’s first five days, claiming 248 lives – most of them Muslims – and leaving 1,600 Christians abandoned in brutal hostage camps.
Between February 1 and 5, 2026, coordinated attacks by radicalized Fulani-tribe terrorists and jihadist ISIS-linked militants targeted communities across Nigeria’s Middle Belt and northwestern states, exposing the deepening security crisis plaguing President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Sectarian Violence Against Christians and Muslims Alike
The blood seeped from two parallel criminalities which are rarely differentiated: systematic violence against Christian farming communities by Fulani militia on the one hand, and jihadist terrorists targeting Muslims who resist extremist ideology on the other.
On the second day of the First Lady’s tour in Washington, as many as 160 persons were killed Feb. 3rd, by ISIS-linked Lakurawa jihadists. Most of the victims were Muslims who had refused the radical message of terrorists in the West central State of Kwara.
Across Benue, Taraba, Southern Kaduna, and Plateau states, where Christians are in the majority, Fulani-tribe Islamist terrorists drove attacks on Christian villages.
Benue State in Central Nigeria bore the brunt of Middle Belt violence, during the first week of February with armed attackers killing at least 16 civilians and one Mobile Police officer in Abande community on February 3. By February 5, coordinated attacks across several counties in the state’s pushed the death toll to 47. Taraba State lost 27 civilians in two separate attacks by jihadist Fulani Ethnic Militia. Plateau State recorded 14 deaths in separate incidents.
1,600 Christians Held Captive in Southern Kaduna
Despite controversial “rescues” of 183 kidnapped Christians on Wednesday Feb. 4, hundreds of hostages languished in kidnapper dens unacknowledged by government authorities but documented by TruthNigeria. In fact, there is a staggering humanitarian crisis in Southern Kaduna, where more than 1,600 Christians are held captive in multiple forest camps controlled by Fulani ethnic militias.
The largest concentration—more than 800 people, of whom 90 percent are Christian —are detained at Rijana camp.
Families report ransom demands from hundreds of thousands to millions of naira—sums impossible for rural farming families. Scores of Christian worshippers taken from Kurmin Wali churches in mid-January have been gradually released only after families sold farmland, livestock, and possessions.
The disparity between the First Lady’s diplomatic tour and domestic bloodshed has sparked outrage on social media, with Nigerians questioning how their government projects stability internationally while failing to protect lives at home.
As Africa’s most populous nation and largest economy struggles with escalating violence, regional observers worry about potential spillover effects into neighboring Cameroon, Niger, and Chad, where similar ethnic and religious tensions simmer.
But the First Lady didn’t score plaudits with some Christian thought leaders in Washington. Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, refused to book an interview with her on his Washington Watch TV program, telling viewers, “I’m not going to give them a platform to cover up what they’re doing in Nigeria.”
Likewise, Dede Laugesen, president of Save the Persecuted Christians, scorned her words to Fox Digital.
“While President Donald Trump and other political elites gathered to welcome First Lady Oluremi Tinubu to Washington, D.C., hundreds of Nigerians back home were facing a monster everyone is afraid to name: Sharia. Sharia is the name of the monster oppressing and tormenting the people of Nigeria,” Laugesen observed in a text to TruthNigeria.
“Sharia is the root of radicalism in Nigeria,” she went on to say. “Not poverty. The terrorists operating in Nigeria, from Boko Haram, to Fulani, to Islamic State of West Africa, to complicit government and security officials, are all driven by a creed that demands that all others submit or die. That’s what’s happening in Nigeria, Ms. Tinubu. Genocidal religious-based violence is being tolerated and enabled in Nigeria.”
Douglas Burton is the editor of TruthNigeria. Mike Odeh James is a conflict reporter for TruthNigeria.
