The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has claimed that some police and army officers collude with Fulani militias in deadly attacks and mass abductions, which target religious communities across Nigeria.
USCIRF has now urgedCongress to bar individuals who lobby on behalf of foreign governments that Washington had blacklisted.
Those governments were blacklisted for severe religious freedom violations.
This is even as US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, revealed yesterday that President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to prioritise Nigerian Christians targeted by ISIS, adding that the directive quietly led to the killing of ISIS’ second-in-command in Nigeria.
“There’s a lot of things we do that the media pays attention to, and a lot of things that the president empowers the department to do on behalf of the American people, that he deserves great credit for,’’ he said.
In a May 2026 report, titled “Non-state Violators of Religious Freedom in Nigeria: Fulani Militants”, the US commission further stated that the Nigerian government censorship had hindered accurate analysis of the identities and motivations of the armed groups violating religious freedom.
However, efforts to get reactions from Force headquarters and its Defence counterpart in Abuja yesterday proved abortive as spokesmen of both agencies neither picked telephone calls nor replied text messages sent to their mobile phones.
But the report stated: “The fates of all these kidnapping victims, like so many others, remain unknown to the public due to the sensitivity of ransom negotiations and, in some cases, possible collusion between perpetrators and some officials from the police and/or army.
“Further complicating matters is the fact that both conflicting media narratives and reported government censorship have hindered accurate analysis of the identities and motivations of the alarming number of armed nonstate actors that violate religious freedom in Nigeria.
“Some observers have argued environmental and economic factors as the driving force behind Fulani militants’ acts of violence, while others have suggested that these actors are engaged in a concerted campaign of outright genocide against non-Muslims, especially Christians.
“In fact, multiple and overlapping factors, including religion in many cases, likely spur Fulani militants to attack communities or individuals.’’
