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15h ago

Northern CAN Urges Tinubu to Deploy Visible Protection for Christmas Worship

Fresh church attacks followed by warnings of possible holiday assaults have heightened fear across Nigeria’s Middle Belt.

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Worshippers pray at the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) during a prayer called by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Minna on December 7, 2025. Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 100 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school last month, a UN source and local media said Sunday, though the fate of the 165 students and staff thought to remain in captivity remains unclear.In late November 315 students and staff were kidnapped from St. Mary's co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger state, as the country buckled under a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the infamous 2014 Boko Haram abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok. (Photo by Light Oriye Tamunotonye / AFP via Getty Images)

Overview

  • On Dec. 18, the northern wing of the Christian Association of Nigeria called for urgent, visible security deployments to highways, worship centers, and public gathering points throughout the Yuletide period.
  • Northern CAN said many Christians are reconsidering holiday travel and church attendance because roads, rural communities, and sanctuaries have become frequent targets.
  • Recent violence includes a Dec. 14 attack on an ECWA church in Ayetoro Kiri that left four dead with more than 20 abducted, a separate Kogi church raid with at least 13 kidnapped reported this week, and November’s mass abduction of hundreds of children from St. Mary’s Catholic School in Niger state.
  • Activists, including Judd Saul, allege intelligence pointing to coordinated Christmas Day strikes on communities in Plateau, Benue, and Kaduna, a prediction presidential aides dismissed as a doubtful external alarm.
  • International scrutiny has intensified since President Trump announced a U.S. religious-freedom ‘Country of Particular Concern’ designation for Nigeria in October, a label President Bola Tinubu rejects as misrepresenting the nation’s reality.