by Steven Kefas, Premier Christianity
With 42,000 civilians killed and an average of seven terror attacks every day, Nigeria’s crisis is vast — but new research shows the world has been looking in the wrong direction. The group responsible for nearly half of all civilian deaths rarely makes the headlines, says Steven Kefas
Who is actually killing people in Nigeria?
It sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t.
Nigeria, everyone knows, is beset by violence and kidnapping. Terror attacks are so frequent they do not make the international headlines – but when they do, one name dominates: Boko Haram.
These two words, ‘Boko Haram’, are the label the world reaches for automatically, just as people once reached for ‘Al-Qaeda’ to explain every act of Islamist violence.
For the past six years, my colleagues and I at the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) have recorded the data features of every single violent incident we could find in Nigeria. 42,033 civilians killed; 34,773 civilians abducted; 15,434 recorded attacks with killings.
In the past six years there has been an average of seven terror attacks every day in Nigeria.
I can tell you plainly: Boko Haram is not killing most Nigerians. They are not even close.