The Rev. Ezekiel Dachomo had every reason to be emotional as he stood in a shallow grave containing the corpses of 11 members of his Church of Christ in Nations congregation in Rachas village, located in central Nigeria.

“I am tired of mass burials! ... Nigerian government came out openly and denied – ‘There is no massacre,’ ‘There is no genocide of Christians in Nigeria’ – and look at it today,” he shouted, gesturing toward to machete-slashed bodies around him. “United Nations, I know you are watching me! American Senate, you are watching what I am doing! ... Special advisor to Trump, now, please, tell Trump to save our lives in Nigeria!”

The pastor’s mid-October Facebook video went viral, joining years of social media messages from Catholic, Protestant and secular human rights activists responding to raids by armed Boko Haram and Fulani insurgents. Many of the attacks occur on Easter, Christmas and other holy days.

Responding to pleas from Republicans in Congress and religious conservatives, President Donald Trump sent this warning, via his Truth Social platform.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” warned Trump. “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

During his first White House administration, Trump designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern for tolerating religious freedom violations against Christians – a stance dropped by President Joe Biden in 2021. Now, Trump has restored that designation, in part responding to appeals by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

“Nigeria is the most dangerous nation on Earth to follow Christ,” said a statement from House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, Vice Chair Mario Diaz-Balart and Legislative Branch Subcommittee Vice Chair Riley Moore. “For simply practicing their faith, Christians are actively being kidnapped, attacked and slaughtered. ... The scourge of anti-Christian violence and oppression of other religious minorities by radical Islamic terrorists is an affront to religious freedom.”

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has, in so many words, called the reports of persecution and genocide fake news. These claims do “not reflect our national reality,” he said, responding to the news from Washington. Nigeria’s population is divided almost exactly 50-50 between Muslims and Christians and, he stressed, the nation “opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it. ... Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so.”

Nigerian authorities have consistently argued that the bloodshed is not driven by religion, but by clashes between farmers and herders fighting for control of land and water due to climate change and other economic forces.

Violence has stained Nigeria for decades, and radical Islamists have destroyed at least 18,000 churches in Nigeria and have murdered more than 50,000 Christians, according to a 2023 Vatican report based on research from the Nigeria-based International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, also known as Intersociety. Fulani forces kill moderate Muslims as well, with an estimated 34,000 dead since 2009.

New statistics gathered by Intersociety claim that, in the first seven months of this year, an average of 30 Christians were murdered each day.

Part of the problem is that Nigerian massacres primarily fuel headlines in religious and “conservative” publications and many of the statistical reports come from religious groups and other activists, while government agencies decline to cooperate, said James Barnett, a Fulbright researcher affiliated with the University of Lagos and the Centre for Democracy and Development in Abuja.

“I have seen a number of massacres covered in mainstream media outlets, perhaps more so in European outlets than American ones, but there is sadly a high threshold for what constitutes newsworthy violence in a country where killings are so commonplace,” said Barnett, reached by email.

“Most major papers have cut their newsrooms, and foreign correspondents are often the first class of journalists to be let go, and Africa-based correspondents even more so,” he said. With these realities, the bloodshed is “typically not seen as a priority for Americans – be they Republicans or Democrats – meaning that much of the daily insecurity occurring in Nigeria does not get covered.”

Terry Mattingly is senior fellow on communications and culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.