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Fact check: How many Christians have been killed by Boko Haram in Nigeria since 2015?
Executive Summary
The available materials do not provide a reliable, single figure for how many Christians Boko Haram has killed in Nigeria since 2015; the reports offer fragmentary counts, broader casualty estimates, and conflated attributions to multiple actors rather than a clear, Boko Haram–specific total [1] [2]. Recent reporting confirms ongoing attacks that kill Christians — including incidents in 2025 — but these are presented as isolated event counts or national totals for Christian victims, not as a cumulative Boko Haram toll since 2015 [3] [4].
1. What the claims assert and where they diverge — Numbers that don't line up
Several claims describe very different counts: one report asserts over 20,300 Christians massacred in South East Nigeria since 2015, with the deaths split between jihadist groups and Nigerian forces [1]. Another dataset cites 3,100 Christians killed in 2024 alone and 2,830 kidnapped, identifying Nigeria as the worst country for Christian killings in 2024 [5]. Other pieces offer incident totals — for example, single attacks killing 51, 60, or 4 Christians — but none of these add up to a vetted cumulative Boko Haram-only figure since 2015 [6] [4] [3]. The discrepancy arises from differing geographic scopes (South East vs national), differing time cutoffs, and different attributions of perpetrators (Fulani militias, jihadists, state forces).
2. Evidence gaps — Why a definitive Boko Haram total is absent
The supplied sources reveal two major evidence gaps: (A) many reports provide aggregate counts of Christian victims without distinguishing perpetrators, and (B) independent tallies combine deaths across multiple armed groups and state actors, making Boko Haram-specific attribution impossible from these documents alone [1] [2]. For example, the 20,300 figure attributes roughly half the deaths to “jihadist groups” and half to Nigerian forces, which does not isolate Boko Haram as the sole actor [1]. Other pieces offer multi-year national tallies or yearly snapshots, but they do not trace which deaths were caused specifically by Boko Haram rather than ISWAP splinters, Fulani militias, or communal violence [5] [2].
3. Recent event reporting confirms ongoing Christian casualties but not cumulative attribution
Contemporary news items document new attacks in 2025 that killed small numbers of Christians — four in a September/October attack and four in another reported strike — and earlier attacks killing dozens in northern states [3] [4]. These accounts establish a continuing pattern of lethal attacks against Christian communities in Nigeria’s northeast and central regions, but they are incident-based and do not attempt to compile a continuous, verified cumulative total since 2015. As such, they show persistence of violence without providing the comprehensive historical accounting the original question seeks [3] [4].
4. Different actors muddy attribution — jihadists, Fulani militias, and state forces
The reports underscore that perpetrator identity is often contested or mixed: some massacres are attributed to Fulani herdsmen or “Fulani militant violence,” others to jihadist groups or unspecified militants, and some deaths are attributed to actions by Nigerian security forces [6] [2] [1]. This multiplicity of actors produces overlapping casualty tallies and makes it difficult to ascribe a single perpetrator such as Boko Haram with a specific share of Christian deaths since 2015 without methodologically rigorous, disaggregated data that none of the supplied sources offers [1] [2].
5. Methodological caution — how organizations and reporters count differs
The sources illustrate diverse counting methodologies: some are organizational year-by-year tallies (e.g., Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List reporting 2024 figures), others are investigative reports focused on a region or a single attack, and one report presents a regional tally combining non-state and state violence [5] [6] [1]. These methodological differences explain why numbers conflict: timeframe, geographic scope, and perpetrator attribution vary, and none of the provided materials declare a reproducible, peer-reviewed methodology that isolates Boko Haram killings of Christians since 2015 [5] [1].
6. What can be stated with confidence from these sources
From the cited materials, it is certain that Nigeria has experienced substantial killings of Christians in recent years, including in 2024 and 2025, and that Boko Haram and related jihadist groups remain active and responsible for deadly attacks in the northeast [5] [4] [3]. It is also clear that other forms of communal and state violence contribute materially to Christian fatalities, and that some reports combine these different causes into single totals, preventing a clean Boko Haram-specific count from the available documents [1] [2].
7. What would be required to answer the original question decisively
A definitive answer requires disaggregated, source-verified casualty data that assigns each death to a perpetrator, covers 2015–present with standardized geographic boundaries, and is transparent about methodology. None of the supplied analyses provides that dataset; therefore, the best factual response is that no reliable cumulative figure for Christians killed by Boko Haram in Nigeria since 2015 can be produced from these sources alone, and further investigation using disaggregated incident databases or governmental/independent forensic tallies would be necessary [1] [2].