By Mike Odeh James
(Makurdi, Benue State) Twenty-five years after 19 hijackers killed 2,977 Americans in one morning, Nigeria’s Christians measure their September 11 not as a date but as a status quo.
In 1998 Osama bin Laden signed a declaration of war against “Jews and Crusaders.” Crusaders meant Christians. The hijackers believed they were obeying a religious instruction, and the dead they left were overwhelmingly Christian. The same ideology now works through Nigeria’s Middle Belt, and targets the same faith.
“The Jihadists in Nigeria will strike in one place, kill 200, move to the next place and kill many, and the attacks persist, on and on,” Judd Saul, founder of Equipping the Persecuted, told TruthNigeria. No single Nigerian atrocity matches bin Laden’s toll in one morning, he said, which is why Nigeria’s September 11 went unseen and even today undercounted.
Add the dead of Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Southern Kaduna and Nasarawa at the hands of Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) and the total surpassed the fatalities in Manhattan and Washington, D.C. years ago. It was never counted as one number, so the world never saw an event but as a “slow-walking genocide,” the phrase coined by French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and noted by ProvidenceMag.com.
Yelewata: the Night the Count Stopped Mattering
On the night of June 13, 2025, gunmen reached Yelewata in Guma county, Benue State. Police repelled them at St. Joseph’s Church. The attackers moved to the market square, poured fuel on the doors of buildings where 500 displaced villagers slept, and shot those who ran, chanting as they killed.
More than 270 Christians died. A monument now stands over them. Benue’s governor put the toll at 59, a figure displaced by grave markers.
On February 2, 2026, the Attorney-General arraigned nine suspects on 57 amended terrorism counts linked to the Yelewata massacre.
The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association has always denied that its members kill Christians. Among the nine indicted suspects is Ardo Lawal Mohammed Dono, chairman of its Nasarawa chapter, whom prosecutors accuse of directing and financing the attack and instructing militia fighters across Benue, Nasarawa and Plateau. He has pleaded not guilty.
Mahanga: When Terrorists Take over a Town and Rename It
Two-way violence between Muslim and Christian residents of Jos erupted in Jos on September 11, 2001, prompting riots that went on for weeks, and was dubbed the “Jos Crisis.”
Yet, 30 miles south of Jos, majority-Christian town of Rankum, in Riyom county became the scene of a one-sided massacre of Christians that same day. The town is now called Mahanga — one of the settlements the Berom Youth Moulders Association names as a staging ground for assaults across four Plateau counties. Herders there routinely deny it.
But by all accounts, the invasion and takeover of Christian settlements across the Middle Belt accelerated after 9/11. And the slow-walking genocide is picking up the pace. On August 17, Fulani Terrorists struck Rim, Chakfem and Bin Mper, killing 27 in simultaneous raids on sleeping families in Plateau State.
Benue Attacks in Otukpo-Nobi and Efeyi
On July 10, two Christian farmers were shot on a cassava farm at Akpachi in Benue State. Thirty-six hours later about 150 armed Fulani attackers entered Otukpo-Nobi, five miles away, killing 16 Christians before dawn on Sunday and wounding 20, many dressing for church.
Saul had warned of imminent attacks on Otukpo days earlier; residents say the warning reached security agencies. “What ETP is doing to help out is to put out our Terror Alerts, an early warning system designed to warn locals of impending attacks,” Saul said.
Sixteen days later the militia came to Efeyi-Utikpi in the same county at 5am “We were woken up by gunfire,” Oche Adah, a resident, told TruthNigeria. He described 50 armed men on 25 motorcycles, chanting as they came. Fifteen died. On August 8 the community laid white caskets end to end in a field as a bishop read the rites, and Equipping the Persecuted, founded by Judd Saul, announced cash relief for the bereaved. ETP is always a first responder to crisis areas and offers help to victims.
“The slow-walking genocide has led to mass death by hunger, sickness and other vices,” according to Saul
Farms are abandoned at planting, harvests burn, families spend years in camps, and deaths from hunger and untreated illness reach no casualty list.
These attacks are reconnoitered, timed and rehearsed: strikes between 3 and 5 a.m., fuel for arson, riders in pairs sealing the footpaths, churches and camps chosen because that is where Christians gather. Survivors across three states report the same chant at the same hour. That is not weather. It is doctrine.
The lie that delayed the rescue
For more than 20 years this violence was explained to Washington as a climate story — desertification pushing herders south into clashes with farmers. Those pressures are real. They do not explain why churches and clergy are chosen as victims.
That changed because a few refused the script. Conflict specialist Doug Burton collaborated with Fox News Reporter Lara Logan in 2021 to bring graphic footage to American audiences through Fox Nation Streaming. Saul and Burton then built TruthNigeria into a field archive of victim lists and testimony. In January, 2026 ETP unveiled the Nigeria Terror Tracker in the U.S. House Visitor Center, mapping five years of attacks by perpetrator and place.
Abuja’s official narrative maintains the killing takes Christians and Muslims alike. The Tracker’s five years of mapped incidents say otherwise.
White House Pivot to Changed Narrative
Nigeria was redesignated a Country of Particular Concern in October 2025. On December 25 U.S. forces struck two terrorist camps in Sokoto. In February 2026 about 200 American personnel arrived for intelligence and training; in May a joint operation killed Abu-Bilal Al-Minuki in Borno. Two bipartisan congressional delegations came, and House committees urged sanctions and visa bans.
To paraphrase Joseph Stalin, an attack becomes a tragedy, a hundred becomes a statistic; a thousand is background noise. Such is the numbing of a people over time until they learn to live with terror as the ordinary. America answered its September 11 with 25 years of vigilance and wall to wall mourning on Cable News on the 25th anniversary.
Nigeria’s Christians have buried tens of thousands yet still wait for Abuja to mark a national day of mourning.
Mike Odeh James is an award-winning conflict writer for TruthNigeria.
