By , Christian Post.
A radical Fulani tribe that advocates say is “hell-bent on turning Nigeria into a caliphate” is abducting and holding Christians in chains while the Nigerian government and media turn a blind eye, according to journalists sounding an alarm about religious and ethnic tensions.
Douglas Burton, a former U.S. State Department official and now senior editor of Truth Nigeria, a project of Equipping The Persecuted, shared details of the organization’s reporting during a Wednesday Capitol Hill press conference on the terror camps within a forest behind Rijana village in the northwestern Kaduna state.
Based on interviews with survivors, Truth Nigeria has reported that there are at least 11 major camps in the vast forest south of Kaduna, and each one reportedly holds more than 50 captives.
“So there’s approximately 500 or 600 people in the forest now, and they have maintained these hostage camps there since December of last year,” Burton said. “So thousands of people have gone through this system, and many were killed.
Survivors of the terror camps who have recounted their experiences in interviews with Truth Nigeria have said that their captors barely fed them and beat them regularly. Hostages in the camp are often killed if their families cannot afford to pay a ransom.
One survivor, a mother named Esther, said Fulani terrorists abducted her and her 10-month-old daughter, Anita, from their home in Gaude village in June 2025. The terrorists marched Esther and several others they had kidnapped into the Rijana enclave, where they held their captives in an assortment of camps.