Growing Awareness of Jihadist, Gender-based Atrocities
By Mike Odeh James
(Abuja) She Came Back. Thousands Have Not.
Grace stepped off a bus at a medical facility in Mararaban Kajuru, on June 13, 2024. tiny, visibly weakened, her body covered in rashes, one of 21 survivors.
It was June 13, 2024. She and 20 other Christians — boys and girls — had just been released from the Rijana forest camps in Kaduna State, a sprawling hostage network operated by Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) gunmen where human lives are traded for ransom and Christian women are broken into compliance.
“Not only were we denied food I was raped and bullied by the younger militia members,” Grace, a 22-year-old College of Education student from Gidan Ways Kaduna told TruthNigeria. “The elderly ones promised to go easy on us if we converted to Islam.”
Grace’s ordeal is the face of the horrific mass of atrocities levied against Nigeria’s Christian women and girls in the name of conquest either by caliphate-seeking insurgents or by radicalized criminals dubbed “bandits” by government authorities. By whichever name, Nigeria’s Christian women and girls for a decade have been chewed up in the hidden hellhole of Nigerian crime.
On June 8, 2026, five senior United Nations human rights experts took notice: their formal alarm that confirmed what survivors like Grace have lived — and what TruthNigeria has reported for years.
“We are particularly alarmed at the very specific and heightened risks of discrimination, violence and exploitation that Christian women and girls are exposed to, as we continue to document grave cases of sexual violence, abductions, acts tantamount to enforced disappearances, forced conversion and child marriage amongst them,” the experts said. “In many cases, those who resist are reportedly threatened, punished, disappeared or killed,” the experts reported.
The UN panel, composed of Special Rapporteurs on violence against women, torture, extrajudicial killings, minority rights, and enforced disappearances, warned that Christian women and girls across northern Nigeria and the Middle Belt are being systematically killed, abducted, sexually assaulted, forcibly converted to Islam, and handed into child marriages, while Nigerian authorities look the other way.
In a formal communication to Abuja, the experts documented girls abducted from a church in Borno State who subsequently vanished; a 13-year-old in Bauchi State forcibly converted and handed into marriage; and a 16-year-old Christian girl whose hand was severed by militants after her family rejected a forced marriage proposal.
“Impunity for these crimes only fuels further violence,” the experts warned.
Stolen Before They Could Grow
Meet Jireh David, a 16-year-old final-year student from Fika County, Yobe State, who was kidnapped in May, 2019 and forcibly married off to a man named Kaloma. Her father, David Maji Salihu, told TruthNigeria he never consented to the marriage and that his daughter was a minor.
The Emir of Fika, a tribal and Islamic ruler, sent word to the family that Jireh had become a Muslim and would be getting married.
“Since May 2019 when my daughter was kidnapped, I have not been able to talk or see my daughter,” Salihu said.
Five years later, the same script played out in the same county. Cecilia Mathias, 16, vanished on March 29, 2024, after her elder sister Mariamu sent her home from the local Monday market in Goge village. She was subsequently taken to Damaturu, the Yobe State capital, and held in the home of a Muslim imam connected to the Yobe State Ministry of Religious Affairs.
“We have reported the issue to the Yobe State Commissioner of Police, and he has directed that my sister be returned to us, but those holding onto her have refused,” Mariamu told TruthNigeria. “As I speak to you, I have not seen or spoken to my sister in four months.”
In both cases, state-linked figures facilitated or shielded the abductions. Thousands of others have not come back.
A System Built on Abandonment
The violence does not happen in a vacuum.
TruthNigeria’s 19-month investigation, conducted with correspondent Luka Binniyat, has documented 560 abductions and up to 1,400 hostages held across Kaduna, Benue, Kogi, and Kwara states. In Kaduna, the state government’s Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration committee has rewarded perpetrators with rehabilitation packages while victims receive no reparations. Financiers of the FEM kidnap economy remain absent from Nigeria’s terrorism sanctions list.
Expert Voices
Washington-based security analyst Scott Morgan of Red Eagle Enterprises told TruthNigeria the UN statement carries exceptional weight precisely because of how many experts signed it.
“This action is indeed rare,” Morgan said. “To see this number of Special Rapporteurs sign off on this document is indicative of the deterioration not only in the security of Nigeria but also when it pertains to the protection of human rights.”
Morgan said accountability must extend beyond Abuja. “Not only are successive Nigerian governments accountable — but what of the main partners: the UK, USA and France? Their silence speaks volumes.”
He pointed to Global Magnitsky statutes and ICC referrals by the UN Security Council as available tools.
“All that is needed is the will to do so,” he said, adding that the statement puts President Bola Tinubu’s administration in an unavoidable spotlight. “They cannot ignore this. This becomes another major test for the Tinubu government.”
David Onyilokwu Idah, Director of the International Human Rights Commission in Abuja, was unequivocal.
“It is a total indictment on the Nigerian federal government and state governments in the North,” Idah told TruthNigeria.
He said the UN statement, while extensive, stopped short of naming the full scale of what is unfolding. “What is happening is a gradual attempt at Islamization and an attempt to eradicate Christian tribes in the North,” Idah said. “The UN report has not gone far enough to call it what it is ethnic cleansing and silent genocide.”
Waiting for Justice
Grace is trying to return to her studies. Her College of Education has not formally acknowledged what happened to her. The Nigerian government has not called.
But the UN has now spoken.
The question is whether Abuja will listen.
Mike Odeh James is an award winning conflict reporter for TruthNigeria.
