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On Christmas Day, U.S. forces unleashed targeted missile and drone strikes in Nigeria against Islamist terrorists who had been killing Christians and other civilians with impunity. 

It propelled Nigeria into the headlines and caught many Americans unaware of the growing conflict in Africa between Christians, radical Islam and others that is spreading across the sub-Saharan Sahel region. 

But I had just been on a fact-finding mission to Nigeria a week earlier and, although U.S. Africa Command’s kinetic action was a surprise, it was not entirely unexpected. In November, President Donald Trump had made clear to Nigeria’s leaders that they had to do more to combat terrorism. This strike resulted from close cooperation between Nigerian and American military planners. 

In the nation’s capital, Abuja, I knelt in the Christian Reformed Church of Nigeria the weekend before Christmas and prayed with Christians who live, work and worship in a capital that — at least for now — still feels normal. Kids fidgeted in the pews. Families sang. It wasn’t that different than my parish at home in Spokane, Washington.

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Funerals for some 27 Christians who were reportedly killed by Islamist Fulani tribesmen in the village of Bindi Ta-hoss, Nigeria on July, 28, 2025. (Courtesy: Christian Solidarity International – CSI)

Yet, at the same........

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