The United States has said Nigeria has not made enough progress in stopping attacks on Christian communities, warning that the country should remain on its list of nations of particular concern over religious freedom.
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Frank Garcia, made the assessment on Thursday during a congressional hearing organised by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa.
Garcia said Nigeria had taken steps to address the violence but that its security measures were not producing the required results.
“I think we would agree, as Under Secretary Hooker stated, after our CPC meeting that progress has not been there, but that doesn’t mean that Nigeria is dismissing concerns,” he said.
He added, “The capacity is not deployed, is not being effective yet, and is not moving fast enough, as far as I’m concerned.”
Garcia said Washington was working with Abuja through a joint working group established after President Donald Trump redesignated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern on Oct. 31, 2025.
The cooperation includes security training, intelligence sharing and efforts to track and prosecute those responsible for attacks.
Republican Congressman Riley Moore also argued that Nigeria had not done enough to protect vulnerable communities and called for the country to remain on the list.
However, Oge Onubogu, director of the Africa Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, warned against presenting the violence as affecting only Christians.
“The evidence does not support treating Christians as the sole victims of Nigeria’s violence or reducing the complex insecurity of the Middle Belt to a single explanation based on religion,” she said.
Nigeria has consistently rejected claims of Christian genocide, maintaining that insecurity affects people of different religious backgrounds and involves terrorism, banditry and communal conflicts.
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