What Religious Freedom Experts Get Wrong About Nigeria
In the first installment of this series, we examined how regional policy experts frequently misinterpret the legal and philosophical frameworks of international religious freedom (IRF) as they pertain to Nigeria. We established that protecting the margins of society is not a distraction from security, but a core component of it. However, if the first half of the U.S.-Nigeria policy gridlock is driven by regional experts misunderstanding human rights frameworks, the second half is driven by freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) experts fundamentally misunderstanding the local and regional context.
Advocacy disconnected from on-the-ground reality is not just ineffective — it can be actively dangerous. In this second essay, we turn the lens in the opposite direction. Drawing on demographic realities, political economy, and historical context, I break down the most common — and most detrimental — misconceptions international religious freedom advocates hold when they engage with the Nigerian context.
MISCONCEPTION 1: Nigeria is half Christian, half Muslim.
REALITY 1: Nigeria is religiously diverse, and Christians are rapidly becoming a demographic minority.
Time and again in circles advocating for religious freedom protections in Nigeria, I encounter this common inaccurate statement: Nigeria is roughly half-Christian, half-Muslim. The perfect example of a bi-religious state. This belief is inaccurate and problematic on so many fronts.
Nigeria has not conducted a census that included questions about religious identity since 1963. Even simple demographic methods that leave a lot to be desired put the most recent breakdown at 56% Muslim, 43% Christian, and 1% other. More complex demographic methods that aim to overcome gaps in official data suggest that the reality is much less level. By 2021, Muslim Nigerians had a 41% higher population growth rate than Christian Nigerians - and the disparity only seems to be increasing further. If these trends continue, demographers estimate nearly 65% of Nigeria will identify as Muslim by 2050.
Simply put, Christians are rapidly becoming a numeric minority in Nigeria - a country with a questionable track record at protecting minority rights. Moreover, Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim northern is experiencing some of the highest population growth rates of anywhere in the world, a phenomenon we know compounds poverty and marginalization - two realities that have plagued this region since British colonization a century ago. We get into the ramifications of this more below.
The “half and half” narrative also erases huge numbers of religious minorities from the Nigeria landscape. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country - even with just one-hundredth of one percent of the population estimated to practice Judaism, that means there are nearly 15,000 Jewish Nigerians. An estimated 8 percent, or nearly 20 million Nigerians, identify as practitioners of animist or traditional/indigenous beliefs. Nigeria has one of the most active humanist/atheist communities in all of Africa. To imagine that percentages are the most important figure in a country as populous as Nigeria leaves millions of people to fend for their rights while we focus on the middle of the bell curve.
MISCONCEPTION 2: In Nigeria, one religious group has more political power than another.
REALITY 2: In Nigeria, political power is bifurcated, and both Muslims and Christians feel under existential threat.
In a liberal democracy, political power comes from one of two sources - people and money. In Nigeria, these sources of power are highly bifurcated. Southern, primarily Christian communities have a monopoly over the country’s wealth, the value of which compounds year over year as is common in capitalist economies. Northern, primarily Muslim communities demonstrate significantly higher population growth, slowly but surely increasing their demographic and democratic power - perhaps exhibited most recently by the previously unheard of election of both a Muslim President and Vice President. Both communities have access to one form of power, and at the same time are becoming increasingly marginalized from the other.
This is why the political context in Nigeria is so complicated, and why both Christians and Muslims in Nigeria act in ways that imply they feel that their safety and fundamental rights are under threat from the state. Christians are rapidly becoming a numeric minority in a fragile democracy that does not protect minority rights particularly well. Meanwhile, northern, primarily Muslim, communities are rapidly becoming relatively poorer compared to their southern compatriates as existing socio-economic marginalization is compounded by population growth and expanding neoliberal policies. Both communities feel under existential threat, and justifiably so.
MISCONCEPTION 3: In Nigeria, secularity and/or religious “balance” will signal improved religious freedom.
REALITY 3: Secularity is not synonymous with religious freedom.
In the Nigerian policy space, political pundits sometimes masquerade as religious freedom advocates. While they may claim expertise in FoRB, their arguments often reveal a fundamentally flawed — and occasionally manipulative — understanding of international norms.
For instance, some commentators routinely cite Nigeria’s membership in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as evidence that the government has abandoned its secularity and, by extension, its IRF responsibilities. This argument relies on flawed logic. Many nations with secular governments and significantly smaller Muslim populations are also OIC members, including Côte d'Ivoire, Albania, and Uganda. Membership in international coalitions does not inherently dictate a state's domestic religious freedom environment.
More recently, observers have expressed concern over the 2023 election of a Muslim/Muslim executive ticket — a sharp departure from the modern precedent where major political parties prioritized a Christian/Muslim balance between presidential and vice-presidential candidates. However, the religious makeup of a government’s officials is not an indicator that the state itself is a religious entity. One need look no further than the United States: the vast majority of U.S. government officials identify as Christian, yet the U.S. is not a Christian government.
Moreover, absolute secularity is not a requirement for a government to meet its religious freedom commitments under international law. In many countries around the world, religious minorities practice their faiths peacefully within non-secular frameworks. Nations such as England (Anglicanism), Costa Rica (Catholicism), Greece (Eastern Orthodox), Zambia (Christianity), Cambodia (Buddhism), and Israel (Judaism) all have official state religions recognized in their founding documents, yet maintain legal architectures that protect religious freedom for all citizens regardless of their faith. In fact, hyper-secular approaches to government have at times undermined religious freedom rights, at least insofar as we interpret them in the United States.
MISCONCEPTION 4: All terrorist actors in Nigeria are religiously motivated/affiliated.
REALITY 4: Organized non-religious groups in Nigeria frequently use terrorist tactics.
This one has been discussed before, so I don’t feel a huge need to reiterate it much. If you consider yourself an expert on religious dynamics in Nigeria, but you refer to all terrorist actors as “jihadists” or “Islamists” then you are no true expert. Despite what our post-9/11 zeitgeist wants us to believe, religious extremists do not have a monopoly over the use of terrorist tactics. In Nigeria, non-religiously affiliated and non-ideologically motivated actors commit egregious, scaled acts of terrorism all the time. Use of terrorist tactics is not indicative of religious or ideological affiliation - not in Nigeria, nor anywhere else.
Moreover, but perhaps less discussed - not all Islamic extremists are terrorists. As is true among many religious communities in the United States - Amish and Latter Day Saints, to name a few - extreme beliefs based in religious ideology are not inherently dangerous. Some of the most important theological advancements that led to current mainstream religious traditions stem from once extreme beliefs and interpretations. Respect for extreme expressions of religious practice are protected by international religious freedom laws and norms. In fact, not even all “jihadists” may be terrorists - under many interpretations of Islam, “jihad” is a form of nonviolent resistance in addition to being considered a call to arms.
MISCONCEPTION 5: International religious freedom norms do not pose a threat to Nigerian sovereignty.
REALITY 5: Aggressive values-based foreign policy interventions pose legitimate sovereignty concerns for our partners.
The International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) advocates for what I would call a “values-based” foreign policy approach. Defenders of this approach correctly point out that it does not impose U.S. domestic law abroad. Instead, it advocates for policies anchored in the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) — a binding international treaty to which Nigeria is a signatory. On paper, it is a shared global standard.
However, the blind application of this approach without incorporating the region's history of colonization, exploitation and abuse, risks creating massive new threats to religious freedom. We cannot ignore the historical reality that religion — specifically proselytizing religions from Europe and North America — played a foundational role in facilitating the trans-Atlantic slave trade and, later, in fostering abusive colonial regimes across Africa. That legacy is still potent in the region’s collective memory, compounded by modern development challenges rooted in those exact travesties. Despite what we might wish for in our history, Africans have every right to be deeply skeptical of Western religious interventions.
Moreover, U.S. foreign policy is a massive, fickle ship that frequently drifts off its “values-driven” course. This is not a partisan view; the habit of masking short-term geopolitical or economic objectives behind interventions couched in "values" spans decades and administrations. One of the most egregious modern examples was NATO’s self-interested approach to the intervention in Libya in 2011. That overreach completely destroyed the hard-won Responsibility to Protect (R2P) agenda just a year before it would have been sorely needed to stem the devastation of the Syrian civil war.
When the U.S. pushes religious freedom mandates in a way that feels coercive or dismissive of Nigerian sovereignty, it is a profound problem for religious freedom itself. Why? Because when FoRB is perceived as a Trojan horse for Western imperialism, local human rights defenders and religious minorities are immediately painted as proxies or "foreign agents" by domestic bad actors. It allows extremists to dismiss universal human rights as mere Western propaganda, and it turns minority religious identities into perceived national security threats. Furthermore, lasting religious freedom cannot be permanently enforced by Washington; it requires a legitimate, capable sovereign state. Undermining Nigeria's sovereignty ultimately weakens the very institutions necessary to protect vulnerable communities in the long term.
Grounding advocacy in a shared reality…
If international religious freedom experts want to enact lasting, positive change in Nigeria, they must ground their policy demands in the country's complex demographic, political, and historical truths rather than relying on convenient, outdated narratives. Demanding absolute secularity in a highly religious context, or ignoring the colonial baggage of Western intervention, does not protect vulnerable communities — it frequently paints a target on their backs and undermines the local institutions needed to secure long-term peace.
We have now laid bare the most damaging misconceptions plaguing both sides of the aisle: the regional policy specialists who dismiss human rights frameworks, and the human rights advocates who ignore regional realities. But critiquing the current state of play is only the first step. If we are going to stop the violence, protect civilian lives, and advance U.S. interests abroad, we have to find a way to work together.
In the third and final essay of this series, we will look at how we can bypass these narrative wars. We will explore the friction points that still divide us, identify our shared realities, and outline how we can finally unlock a unified, strategic U.S. response to the crisis in Nigeria.