22.4.2026
US Senator Ted Cruz said the President Bola Tinubu’s administration with its failure to stem the tide of violence in the northern part of Nigeria was complicit in the “mass murder of Christians.”
The Texas born Cruz who has been in the fore front of calling on Tinubu’s government to stop the killing said that the authorities “look the other way” as followers of Jesus Christ are targeted and killed.
He was speaking during a U.S. Senate session on Tuesday, as he briefed his colleagues on findings into allegations of Christian genocide in northern Nigeria. He said Nigeria’s designation as a country of particular concern had produced no meaningful action from Mr Tinubu’s government.
“Nigerian officials have been, unfortunately, complicit in facilitating these atrocities,” Mr Cruz remarked.
“At the state level, a dozen Nigerian states implement Islamist blasphemy and Sharia laws. At the federal level, the government looks the other way at Islamist violence. The result is unsurprisingly more Islamic jihadists violence.”
Mr Cruz believes that “more Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world”.
“Since 2009, Islamic jihadists have murdered more than 50,000 Christians in Nigeria and more than 20,000 churches, schools, and religious institutions have been destroyed, most burned to the ground,” he said.
The American lawmaker said the U.S. had identified and sanctioned the government officials sponsoring violence in the country.
Mr Cruz introduced the Nigerian Religious Freedom Accountability Act in 2025 and facilitated the U.S. designation of Nigeria as a ‘country of particular concern’ over alleged targeted killings of Christians.
The presidency did not immediately reply to the request for comment on the matter. But the Nigerian government has always denied being complicit and turning a blind eye to the killings in the North and other regions. With People’s Gazette reports