A US congressman has called on the Trump administration to take “forceful action” to protect Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt after gunmen opened fire on mourners during a mass burial in Plateau State on Wednesday, killing several people at a site where communities had gathered to bury victims of an earlier attack.
Riley Moore made the demand in a statement Thursday, reacting to reports and eyewitness accounts from Barkin Ladi Local Government Area, where assailants emerged from surrounding hills and fired on residents assembled for the burial of seven people killed in a prior assault on Fan District. The attack had not been officially confirmed by Nigerian police as of Thursday, but eyewitness testimony from journalist Masara Kim, who was present at the scene, provided a detailed account of what unfolded.
“There is an ongoing massive attack on communities south of Jos. More than five communities are under simultaneous assault. While we were at the burial site, the attackers emerged from the hills and began shooting,” Kim said. He added that mourners “barely dug a shallow grave when the attackers struck,” forcing those gathered to flee before the burial could be completed.
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Moore’s statement drew a pointed contrast between Nigeria’s willingness to project military force beyond its own borders and what he characterized as its failure to protect its own citizens from recurring violence.
He referenced Nigeria’s December 2025 deployment of fighter jets and troops to Benin Republic to help suppress an attempted coup — an intervention that demonstrated both capability and political will. “Nigeria’s willingness to step in to stop a violent attack in another country, while they stand by as their own Christian citizens are brutalised, makes these absolutely horrific scenes unfolding in Plateau State all the more unconscionable,” Moore said.
He alleged that despite receiving early warnings of imminent attacks, Nigerian security forces were absent when the assault took place. “The Nigerian Government could root out the terrorism and stop the martyrdom of its own citizens. But, despite receiving early warnings of impending attacks, they are nowhere to be found as Christians are murdered for their faith, like lambs led to slaughter,” he said. “Enough is enough.”
Moore said he was encouraged that the Trump administration had incorporated the protection of Christians in Nigeria into its counterterrorism strategy, and urged the White House to move from policy language to concrete action. “Now, I am asking the Trump Administration to take forceful action to defend our innocent brothers and sisters in Christ in the Middle Belt of Nigeria, the epicentre of an ongoing Christian genocide,” he said.
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His call drew support from Sean Nelson, Senior Counsel for Global Religious Freedom with Alliance Defending Freedom International, who described Moore’s statement on X as “very forceful” and called for maximum US pressure in line with the administration’s counter-terrorism framework. “He’s completely right. We need max US pressure, in line with new counter terror strategy,” Nelson wrote.
The Plateau State violence and Moore’s subsequent intervention sit within a wider and intensifying American political conversation about the treatment of Christians in Nigeria. Conservative politicians and advocacy groups aligned with Trump, including Senator Ted Cruz and various faith-based organizations, have been escalating claims that Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt and North are facing a genocide carried out by Islamist militants — a characterization that has been gaining traction in Washington’s right-wing policy circles and feeding into the framing behind Nigeria’s Country of Particular Concern designation, which Abuja is currently lobbying to reverse.
The Nigerian federal government has consistently and forcefully rejected the genocide framing, maintaining that insecurity across the country affects both Muslims and Christians and that the drivers of violence in the Middle Belt — farmer-herder conflicts, armed banditry, resource competition over land and water — are more complex than a religiously motivated extermination campaign. Plateau State has been one of the most consistently affected areas, with cycles of communal violence and retaliatory attacks devastating communities across Barkin Ladi and neighboring local government areas for years.
The attack on mourners conducting a mass burial — people gathered specifically because violence had already taken lives — represents a particular category of brutality that amplifies the political reaction in the United States while deepening the trauma of communities in Plateau State that have been living inside recurring cycles of grief and displacement with insufficient protection and no durable resolution in sight.
