ONITSHA, Nigeria — Emeka Umeagbalasi, who runs a civil liberties organisation from his home in the commercial hub of southeast Nigeria, says he has documented 125,000 Christian deaths in Nigeria since 2009, figures that have been cited by prominent United States lawmakers.
Mr Umeagbalasi, a Catholic who owns a small shop selling screwdrivers and wrenches in a market in Onitsha, founded the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, known as Intersociety, in 2008 and has sought to track killings and destruction tied to violence in Nigeria.
In interviews with The New York Times, Mr Umeagbalasi said he often does not verify his data and acknowledged that his research was mainly based on “secondary sources,” including Christian interest groups, Nigerian news reports, and Google searches.
The New York Times reported the account on Sunday, January 18, 2026.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Representative Riley Moore of Virginia and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey have cited Mr. Umeagbalasi’s work.
The three lawmakers did not respond to requests for comment.
President Trump launched airstrikes in Nigeria on Christmas Day.
A White House spokeswoman said in a statement that “the massacre of Christians by radical, terrorist scum will not be tolerated.”
Taiwo Aina for The New York Times
A Vacuum of Official Statistics
The Nigerian government does not release comprehensive data on the number of people killed in violent attacks or the religions of those killed.
Many attacks go unrecorded because they occur in remote areas and are only heard of long afterward.
Researchers say that a lack of security and widespread impunity in the most affected parts of the country endangers both Christian and Muslim Nigerians.
Claims, Assumptions and Disputes
Umeagbalasi has said that more than 7,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria in the first seven months of 2025.
Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a conflict monitoring group known as ACLED, estimated that around 6,700 people — including Islamist insurgents and military personnel — were killed during the same period, and recorded 3,000 of those killed as civilians. ACLED’s figures are not disaggregated by religion.
Umeagbalasi said he rarely travels to areas where attacks have occurred, including Nigeria’s Middle Belt, and that he typically determines religious identity based on where killings occur.
“If killings take place in Borno today, when I look at it, I will just look at the zone where the killings take place,” Mr. Umeagbalasi said.
“Once they take place in southern Borno, there is a likelihood of the victims being Christians or many of them or most of them being Christians.”
He also said he relied on “secondary sources,” including Open Doors, a Christian advocacy group whose data has been cited by President Trump.
One of his main sources is Truth Nigeria, a project founded by Judd Saul, a filmmaker and evangelist from Iowa.
Truth Nigeria frequently identifies the perpetrators of attacks on Christians as “Fulani ethnic militias.”
The Fulani are an ethnic group with tens of millions of mostly Muslim members.
Mr Umeagbalasi called the Fulani “animals” and said all Fulanis should be confined to one Nigerian state.
Researchers, journalists and prominent Christians regularly dispute Mr. Umeagbalasi’s figures.
Nnamdi Obasi, the Nigeria adviser for the International Crisis Group, said Intersociety’s methodology was “a total blank,” adding, “The basic addition is very, very faulty.”
Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic bishop of Sokoto, criticised the framing of the violence and urged a focus on governance failures.
“Focus on the fact that this state is weak and doesn’t have the capacity to protect its people,” Bishop Kukah said.
Sokoto is the northwestern Nigerian state that the United States bombed in December.
A Kidnapping Claim Challenged by Officials
Mr Umeagbalasi claimed that 25 schoolgirls kidnapped in Kebbi state were mostly Christian.
“The girls — a majority of them are Christians, but you know what Nigerian government did?” Mr. Umeagbalasi said.
“They went and Islamized them. Gave them Islamic names just to confuse people.”
The girls were all Muslim, according to the school principal and local officials.
Alkasim Abdulkadir, a spokesman for Nigeria’s foreign minister, denied that the government misrepresented the girls’ religion.
He criticised Mr. Umeagbalasi’s work, saying, “There’s a lot of fallacy to his research, a lot of confirmation bias,” and added, “He’s very performative.”
‘Googled’ Church Figures
Umeagbalasi said close to 20,000 churches were destroyed in the past 16 years.
He said 100,000 churches existed in Nigeria, though there is no government data on the number of churches in the country.
When asked where he got the 100,000 figure, Umeagbalasi said he Googled it.
Umeagbalasi said he held degrees in security studies and in peace and conflict resolution from the National Open University of Nigeria.
He runs Intersociety out of a home office, where a plaque reads: “For excellent service to humanity.”
His wife, Blessing, an evangelical Christian, is a board member of Intersociety.
Umeagbalasi said he was close to finishing a report titled “The Situation of Christians in Nigeria Fueled by Jihadist Terrorism Inches a Point of No Return.”
He described his work as “miraculous,” “powerful,” and “knowledgeable,” and warned: “If nothing is done”, “Nigeria will explode.”
“This is our heavenly marathon,” he said.
