Report: Nigeria hires Washington insiders to cover up massacre of Christians

International Christian Concern published a report last week revealing the Nigerian government has been spending $10 million on a Washington lobbying operation designed to whitewash alleged genocide.

Much of the money is going to heavyweight Washington lobbyists with ties to the White House and State Department, the report says.

Since 2009, at least 190,150 Nigerians have been killed in mainly religious violence, with 128,750 of the victims being Christians, even as the slaughter escalated in 2026, the ICC noted.

Nigeria remains the deadliest country on earth for Christians, Baptist Press reports.

The ICC analysis called on Congress to continue designating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern and add sanctions as a signal of U.S. displeasure with the Nigerian government’s unsuccessful efforts to protect Christians.

“The global community is being subjected to an advanced gaslighting campaign [by Nigeria],” the ICC concluded. “Congress must retain the CPC designation and use the Global Magnitsky Act to sanction those financing terror and this wall of silence.”

CPC is a formal U.S. government designation identifying nations whose governments directly commit or systematically tolerate violations of religious freedom.

In October 2025, President Donald Trump designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern.

Finally, the ICC report alleges Nigeria has been attributing the violence against Christians to climate change and regional instability, a claim often bolstered by Western media, but supercharged by supposedly conservative lobbyists.

In the report, ICC fellow Justin Joseph identified the specific lobbying machinery by name.

Matt Mowers, a former senior State Department adviser on the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, registered his firm Valcour LLC as a foreign agent on Dec. 30, 2025, exactly two months after Trump designated Nigeria a CPC.

The company is paid $120,000 per month by Nigerian sources, according to Joseph.

“Ironically, an official who had based his political career on conservative principles is now defending a regime that is responsible for the massacre of Christians,” the ICC noted.

DCI Group is also contracted for $9 million over six months for what Nigeria’s government calls “strategic communications on the safety of Christians,” while BGR Government Affairs holds a separate $150,000 monthly retainer, ICC said.

The Adomi Advisory Group, contracted directly by Nigeria’s Ministry of Finance, was tasked with ghostwriting letters to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, ICC said.

Every step the money takes, from Nigeria’s oil fields to Washington, is documented in Foreign Agents Registration Act filings, Joseph noted.

ICC even concludes a congressional briefing on Nigeria held March 26 advanced talking points written by these paid foreign agents, denying the alleged genocide of Nigerian Christians.

The same day ICC published its findings, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom released its own report regarding “the ongoing religious freedom violations” in Nigeria.

USCIRF estimated 30,000 Fulani militants, 99% of whom are Muslim, are active across Nigeria, operating in groups ranging from 10 to 1,000 members.

“Violence by Fulani militants caused the highest number of deaths among all religious communities in Nigeria over the last year as compared to attacks by organized insurgent groups and criminal gangs,” the report said.

Open Doors, the international religious freedom watchdog, attributed 3,490 Christian deaths in Nigeria to Fulani militants and allied terrorist organizations in its 2026 World Watch List report.

Open Doors estimated 2,293 Christians have been abducted, with an estimated 1,000 rapes and 10,000 subjected to physical or mental abuse, while admitting the actual figures “could be significantly higher.”

Militants coordinate via radio, deploying motorcycles and automatic weapons to hit multiple rural targets simultaneously.

They wield machetes and conduct raids after dark to maximize terror and force rapid displacement, seizing agricultural land for their herds.

A local government official has called such murders of Christians “ethnic and religious cleansing by attackers speaking the Fulani dialect,” The Lion previously reported.

“Nigeria remains entrenched in an intense, daily, and seemingly perpetual crisis of insecurity — a crisis that is likely to persist until the federal and several state governments” protect religious freedom, the USCIRF report said.

Meanwhile, the Christian death toll continues to rise.

Just after midnight on the day the ICC and USCIRF reports were released, suspected Fulani militias hit a village in Plateau State, killing 11 Christians, including two pregnant women, children and elderly residents, the ICC noted.

Attackers moved house to house with firearms and machetes as families slept.

Among those murdered were community leader Sunday Hwie, 60; Eunice Samuel, 25, who was pregnant; Laraba Sunday, 29, also pregnant; and Festus Sunday, 3.

Then, less than 24 hours later, armed Fulani militias on motorcycles struck a neighboring village, killing at least eight more Christians across multiple communities as security forces arrived only after the attackers had already dispersed, the ICC said.

“Victims have long reported that security forces are consistently slow to respond to attacks on their communities,” the USCIRF report noted. “As in prior years, some Christian advocates have continued to suggest that security forces responding to or investigating attacks routinely show favoritism toward Muslim communities.”