A United Nations expert has warned that widespread violence and weak accountability for armed groups are eroding religious freedom in Nigeria, with many victims understandably interpreting the situation as persecution.
The UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Nazila Ghanea, made the remarks on Friday following a two-week fact-finding visit to Nigeria.
Ghanea said her team interviewed more than 200 people across Abuja, Kano and Jos in Plateau State, noting that insecurity consistently dominated discussions over religious tolerance issues.
“Almost every interlocutor responded by talking about religious crisis and insecurity,” she said, adding that broader questions of religious freedom were often overshadowed by security concerns.
Nigeria continues to face multiple overlapping security challenges, including a long-running jihadist insurgency in the north, armed banditry, and recurring farmer-herder clashes in central regions.
The country, Africa’s most populous, is divided broadly between a Muslim-majority north and a Christian-majority south, a factor that has often shaped perceptions of violence.
Ghanea noted that while some attacks appear to target religious communities, both Christians and Muslims are affected by violence, and many incidents are also driven by competition over land and resources.
Researchers have similarly argued that the reality is more complex than claims of targeted persecution, pointing instead to overlapping ethnic, economic and security drivers.
The UN official said repeated failures in law enforcement and justice delivery contribute to perceptions of persecution among victims.
“When justice is not seen to be done, understandably, the victim starts to describe this as persecution or genocide,” she said.
Her comments come amid renewed international debate following claims by some Western political figures that Christians are facing systematic persecution in Nigeria. The Nigerian government has repeatedly rejected such characterisations.
Ghanea, however, said she did not observe evidence of an official policy targeting any religious group, though she acknowledged the severity of the security crisis.
“Did we see a direct government instruction with the intention of destroying one religious community or another? I did not,” she said.
