Cruz introduces bill to impose sanctions to protect Nigerian Christians facing genocide

Audio By Carbonatix

(The Center Square) – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025 in an attempt to protect Christians and other religious minorities from persecution by Islamic militants. The bill, if signed into law, directs the federal government to impose sanctions on the Nigeria government and its officials “who facilitate Islamist jihadist violence and the imposition of blasphemy laws” against non-Muslim Nigerians.

“Nigerian Christians are being targeted and executed for their faith by Islamist terrorist groups, and are being forced to submit to sharia law and blasphemy laws across Nigeria,” Cruz said. “It is long past time to impose real costs on the Nigerian officials who facilitate these activities,” the bill “uses new and existing tools to do exactly that.”

In the first 220 days of this year, more than 7,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria, a new report published by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (InterSociety) states. Persecution of Christians escalated in 2009 after an Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram uprising. Since then, an estimated 189,000 civilians have been killed, 125,000 of whom were Christians, InterSociety, a Nigerian non-governmental organization, says.

By 2015, Boko Haram began self-identifying as ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province). ISWAP, Fulani fighters, soldiers with Operation Safe Haven, a joint military force, and other Islamic terrorist groups are targeting Christians for annihilation, according to multiple reports.

The new InterSociety report details “killings, abductions and other attacks by jihadists” by date and region. In August, Islamists committed atrocities in villages and churches in Bokkos where “attackers unleashed unprovoked violence … they burned homes; raped women, destroyed cultivated farmlands, and launched a frenzied attack on innocent civilians,” the report states. In one instance, a dozen people “sustained varying degrees of gunshot and machete wounds as they fled for their lives,” it says, citing local news sources.

“Several communities have already been seized and turned into no-go zones for Christian natives, with abandoned homes belonging to the Berom, Mwagavul, and Ron ethnic groups now occupied without modification,” Truth Nigeria reports. Nigerian authorities “have witnessed this land grab and ethnic displacement but seem to ignore it,” it says.

“The apparent failure of the [Nigerian] government to protect civilians has widespread effects with more than 10,000 schools being closed down in Northern Nigeria due to the current insecurity, consigning millions of children to illiteracy, early marriage and poverty,” Open Doors says in its 2025 World Watch List report. The nonprofit claims more than 350 million Christians are being persecuted for their faith worldwide, with Nigeria ranking as the seventh worst country for Christians to live in.

A 2023 InterSociety report said at the time that more than 18,000 churches and 2,200 Christian schools had been set on fire and thousands of Christians had been kidnapped. Since 2009, millions of Christians have been displaced; since 1999, 12 northern state governments have implemented Islamic Sharia law, including blasphemy laws, despite Nigeria being a secular country, according to multiple reports.

Cruz’s bill would require the Secretary of State to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern and impose sanctions against government officials who have “promoted, enacted, or maintained Nigerian blasphemy laws, including through public advocacy, legislative action, or executive enforcement directives; or tolerated violence by non-state actors invoking religious justifications to commit acts of violence, including persons designated as foreign terrorist organizations.”

The bill also would require the Secretary of State to ensure that Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa remain designated as Entities of Particular Concern.

“The Nigerian government claims to offer protection for Christians but when attacks occur, if they bother to show up, they often just watch the carnage unfold and do nothing,” Des Moines, Iowa-based pastor Terry Amann told The Center Square. In addition to encouraging Christians to become involved in politics in the United States, Amann leads mission trips in Africa and has been an advocate for the persecuted church. “The Nigerian Christians need our prayers, our concern and our government to put pressure on the Nigerian government to protect them,” he said.

Citing the New Testament book of Acts 14:21-22, Amann said early Christian leaders Paul and Barnabus returned to Lystra, and Iconium, and Antioch (modern-day Asia Minor) “strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them in their faith, and saying, ‘Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.’”

“Nobody understands that more than the Christian Brethren in Nigeria,” he said. Citing another Open Door report, he said, “More believers are killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world.”