I saw an interesting article over at Daily Wire that talks about the most dangerous country in the world for Christians: Nigeria. I thought Nigeria has Boko Haram running around kidnapping people, but the article says that “roughly 90% of all martyrs in 2022 — over 5,000 Christians murdered for their faith — were from Nigeria.” The author of the article is from ADF, so it’s reliable.

The article is paywalled, but here’s an archived copy.

Excerpt:

Northern Nigeria is a place where the Church faces some of the worst persecution on earth. According to Open Doors, roughly 90% of all martyrs in 2022 — over 5,000 Christians murdered for their faith — were from Nigeria.

One of those martyrs was Deborah Emmanuel Yakubu, a Christian student at a university in Sokoto State, who in May 2022 was stoned to death and burnt by her Muslim classmates because of her faith in Jesus. Another Christian woman, Rhoda Jatau, faced a mob and was arrested for blasphemy after the mob accused her of sharing a video that insulted Islam because it condemned the lynching of Deborah.
Rhoda sat in a jail in Bauchi State, Nigeria, for over 18 months because of the accusations. She only saw her family and lawyers at court hearings.

But through her witness to the injustice of the treatment of Christians in Northern Nigeria, both by extremist Islamist mobs and baseless prosecutions, her case caused national outrage.
Earlier this month, after enormous national outcry, Rhoda was finally released on bail, able to spend Christmas this year with her family in safety. While the charges against her are still pending, many within Nigeria and internationally are pushing for them to be dropped fully.

There are a couple of signs that things are improving in the article, here’s one:

As with many places where Christians are a religious minority, converts to Christianity, particularly from Islam, often find it extremely dangerous to practice their faith. Daniel Kefee* was an evangelist in Northern Nigeria who brought a young Muslim woman, Hafsatu*, to Christ. But when her family found out, members of her family threatened to kill her. She sought out help from Daniel, who found a Christian residential school that could care for her.

For helping Hafsatu, Daniel was charged by Nigerian authorities with kidnapping. Yet Daniel and his lawyers bravely presented to the court the reality of what had happened. In an astonishing result given the region, the judge not only acquitted Daniel, but prodded the prosecutors, asking them, “should the defendant have left the girl, what would have happened with her?”

And another one:

Also this year, in another state in Northern Nigeria, a young woman named Mary Olowe* similarly converted to Christianity and faced death threats from her family. She was able to flee and filed for a restraining order against those who threatened her. Once again, the court issued a remarkable decision, granting the order and explicitly recognizing as a fundamental right Mary’s ability to change her religion from Islam to Christianity without facing any threat of violence.

If you like to pray for Christians in other countries, Nigeria should probably be your first pick. The Muslims there are clearly out gunning for Christians. It would be nice if our elected officials in the Biden administration were doing something about this, but I don’t think they care. They have other priorities.