Kiristoci da Musulmi suna addu'a tare. Asalin hoton: Reuters.
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Claim: An X user shared a video with claims that Muslims killed 500,000 Christians in Nigeria in 2025.
Verdict: Insufficient evidence! No data supports the claim that 500,000 Christians were killed by Muslims or any group in Nigeria. While there are conflicting data on the number of total Christians killed by jihadists, they are far below the 500,000 claimed.
Full Text
Since the United States’ President Donald Trump declared Nigeria a country of particular concern, the issue of Christian genocide has become a recurring discourse among the citizens.
To further reinforce this narrative, an X user recently shared a video (archived here) of an unknown individual claiming that “Muslims killed over 500,000 Christians” in Nigeria in 2025.
The man, while speaking in an interview at what appeared to be an international conference, said it is hypocritical to ask for the freedom of Palestine since there are more people dying in Nigeria.
“…I mean, I can tell you that last year alone, over 500,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria just in one year, and nobody is protesting. The activists are not saying anything. For me, that is hypocrisy. In the North of Nigeria, Christians are being killed daily because the Islamic militants don’t want Christians to exist in the North of Nigeria,” he said.
Again, this claim has regenerated the “Christian genocide” debate, with the majority of other X users believing it as true. So far, the tweet has generated over 300,000 views, 49,000 likes and 16,000 reposts.
In the past months, DUBAWA has debunked multiple claims around the Christian Genocode narrative as false. This genocide narrative and the sensitive nature of the claim made us fact-check this.
Verification
To begin with, we conducted a reverse image search on keyframes from the video. Results show that the footage was initially posted on X in September 2025 by a blog named Israel News Pulse. Seeing this version of the video is from 2025, the man’s reference to “last year” could also be 2024. This raises questions about the claim’s timeline.
Also, there was nowhere in the video where the man generally said “muslims killed Christians.” Rather, what he stated in the latter part was “Islamic militants.”
DUBAWA observed that the blogger twisted their caption to start a controversy. We also found a Facebook blogger who manipulated the caption to suit a similar narrative last year.
However, for avoidance of doubt, the “Muslims” being referred to by either this X or Facebook user are jihadist groups like Boko Haram, ISWAP, and other terrorist groups. And while these groups have murdered many Christians, reports show that they are also responsible for the killings of several Muslims in Nigeria.
To verify the claim that 500,000 Christians were killed in 2025 or 2024, as the findings now reveal, DUBAWA searched for credible reports that support the statement. But we found none. Also, there is no single official data from the Nigerian Government that clearly states the number of Christians who were victims of targeted attacks in those years.
What exists, however, are conflicting data from politicians and advocacy groups, many of whom also fail to clearly state their methodologies or sources. Even if it were assumed that their methodologies were accurate, the total number of conflict fatalities across all groups in 2025 was reported as 11,968.
Between October 2024 and September 2025, Open Doors International reported 4,849 Christian killings globally. Out of this, the organisation said 3,490 were killed in Nigeria. These numbers are still far below the “500,000” claim.
From a broader look, the highest publicly quoted figure so far is 189,009 deaths. The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), a non-governmental organisation, quoted this figure as the number of Nigerian Christians killed by jihadists since 2009.
Another differing example is from a United States Senator, Ted Cruz, who the BBC quoted to have saying that over 50,000 Christians in Nigeria have been massacred since 2009.
However, since none of this data is official, it is inaccurate for anyone to claim that 500,000 Nigerians were killed either in 2024 or 2025.
Conclusion
There is no evidence to support the claim that jihadists killed 500,000 Christians in Nigeria. Although conflicting figures exist, they are far below the claimants’ quote.
