The Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) has issued a strongly worded press statement today, Saturday, November 1, 2025, challenging the Nigerian government’s response to international concerns over the large-scale killings of Christians in the country.
The statement comes in the wake of a recent rebuttal by the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs to remarks made by U.S. President Donald J. Trump regarding the violence.
RULAAC, while acknowledging that many atrocities are perpetrated by non-state actors—including armed herders, Islamist extremists, and bandits—insists that the fundamental issue remains state responsibility.
RULAAC’s Executive Director, Okechukwu Nwanguma, stressed that the primary duty of the government is to protect the lives and rights of all citizens. He argued that the prolonged persistence of mass killings, coupled with repeated attacks and a lack of accountability, blurs the line between government failure and complicity.
The advocacy group outlined four damning realities, RULAAC labels the government’s inability to prevent massacres, despite prior intelligence, as negligence a form of culpability when it results in death, The group argues that impunity fuels recurrence, sending a clear message that perpetrators can kill and escape punishment, RULAAC points out the stark contrast between the swift, often brutal, response of security forces to peaceful protests and their sluggish or absent action during attacks on churches, villages, and schools, calling this a reflection of bias or indifference and The outcome of either government incompetence (inability to act) or complicity (unwillingness to act) is the same: Christians and other vulnerable groups are being killed with impunity, which RULAAC calls a “moral indictment.”
“A government that cannot or will not protect life has lost the moral authority to govern,” the statement read, adding that the protection of citizens is not an act of generosity, but “the very essence of sovereignty.”
RULAAC urged the Nigerian government to move beyond denial and diplomatic rebuttals by taking urgent, transparent, and verifiable actions, specifically calling for strengthening intelligence and early warning systems in conflict-prone areas, ensuring prompt investigation, arrest, and prosecution of perpetrators regardless of identity and rebuilding public confidence through equal protection of all communities.
The statement concluded that Nigeria’s credibility will be restored not by dismissing international concern, but by demonstrating accountability at home.
