JOHANNESBURG — Thankful families this month celebrated the July 10 rescue by the Nigerian army of dozens of abducted schoolchildren, but the latest progress in embattled President Bola Tinubu’s three-year war on Islamic militants may be too little too late for some American lawmakers.
The U.S. House last week approved an amendment that proposes cutting all aid to Nigeria until the Tinubu administration steps up efforts to protect the West African nation’s Christians from Islamic extremists.
The amendment, approved by a voice vote, was added to the fiscal 2027 State Department spending bill that later passed 217-209 along mostly party lines.
Rep. Gregory Steube, the Florida Republican who sponsored the clause, said American taxpayers should not be expected to fund a “corrupt” Nigerian government that has failed “to meet its fundamental obligation to protect citizens” and allowed extremists to operate “with impunity.”
The amendment has neither Senate nor White House backing yet, but its passage in the House is one measure of growing concern and outrage in the U.S. over the wave of religious violence in Africa’s most populous nation, where slightly less than half of the country’s 242 million people are Christian and slightly more than half are Muslim.
Mr. Trump ordered Christmas Day airstrikes on Islamic terror groups in December, then followed up with a February deployment of U.S. military personnel assigned to train and advise the Nigerians.
Christian and Muslim clerics on Friday led celebrations, according to the Associated Press, in the village of Esinele, where dozens of children — most of them Christian — were abducted from three schools in May by the extremist group Boko Haram.
“We have all come here to thank God for protecting the children and their teachers and helping the military men who rescued them,” village chief Tajudeen Abioye told the wire service.
As violence escalates, a recent study showed Christians were more than twice as likely to be killed by militants in the six years prior to September 2025
According to the report by the Dutch-based Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, an estimated 10,500 Muslim deaths in the six-year period were the result of religious killings, while 23,000 Christian deaths were blamed on religious extremists.
Since independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria has struggled against secession groups along with ethnic and religious violence.
In 1967, the mostly Christian Igbo declared themselves independent as the nation of Biafra, triggering a genocide, and while numbers are disputed, academics agree that between one and two million Igbo died before they surrendered.
Today the war is against extremists in the north who seek to establish a caliphate.
The battle has touched other parts of Africa, spreading to nearby Mauritania and south to the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique where the Islamic State is waging a war, also in quest of a caliphate that would be sovereign and independent.
Of Africa’s 55 nations, 18 have a Muslim majority. Others like Ghana and Kenya are predominantly Christian but enjoy freedom of religion with mosques and churches often alongside each other.
In South Africa, Hindu temples and Jewish synagogues abound. For the most part, communities get on well.
Nigeria made headlines in 2014 when Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls — most of them Christian — from a school in the northern town of Chibok.
A global campaign ensued, with the UN and other groups demanding the release of the children.
Some of the girls escaped, others were released in exchange for prisoners. Many are still missing and returnees told of rape, beatings and forced conversion to Islam.
ORFA makes clear the problem has only grown worse, warning that extremists are motivated by radical Islam but also a quest for resources. And tribal rivalries are serious, notably among the Fulani people who make up less than 10% of the population.
Frans Vierhout, a research analyst at ORFA, said the group’s latest data “looked at how killings occurred, who they target, where they operate, seasonal fluctuations. And the evidence points strongly in one direction.
Violence linked to Fulani militia is the dominant force behind Nigeria’s death toll and the Western preoccupation with Boko Haram is, at best, misleading.
“The country, he said, was “incubating a terror network” as yet acknowledged by the world.
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