As millions of Nigerians face escalating terror, a chilling new chapter unfolded this week: thousands fled for their lives in northwestern Nigeria after infamous Fulani bandit leader Bello Turji threatened to exterminate entire villages. He vowed: not even a chicken will be spared if anyone remains upon his return. Triggered by a security raid that killed one of his men, Turji’s gang unleashed agony on Tidibale in Sokoto state, gunning down the innocent and torching homes until dozens of villages stood as smoking ash. Now, in nearby Isa alone, 3,000 terrified refugees seek help, haunted by the fear that death is only a dawn away.

This latest wave of fear is no isolated incident. It underscores the brutal reality that so many, particularly in America, remain completely unaware of the millions of Christians kidnapped, tortured, or killed across the globe every single year. In Nigeria alone, those numbers reach into the thousands annually. Yet even among those who do know of these hostilities, how many can truly grasp the daily terror these Christians endure?

Brad Brandon can. As the founder of Across Nigeria, Brandon has witnessed horrors most Americans could scarcely imagine. “What’s happening in Nigeria … is a genocide of Christians,” he declared during a Washington Policy Institute press briefing. “More Christians are killed in northern Nigeria than anywhere else in the world. In fact, in 2024, if you take all the Christians martyred for their faith globally, 70% of them were killed in northern Nigeria.”

Just earlier this week, Christians in Benue state, Nigeria, were attacked by Fulani herdsmen. Around midnight, while villagers slept soundly in their homes, the attackers arrived in Otobi Akpa village. At least four Christians were shot and killed, with nine others having been killed between January 5 and 6. This same village had already been attacked in April, in which 13 Christian lives were taken and at least 50 homes were burned. As community leader Adikwu Ogbe said at the time, “The armed herdsmen invaded our community, shooting sporadically at anyone they sighted.”

For the many — like those in Otobi Akpa — whose homes are razed, loved ones murdered or abducted, and who live in daily fear of not seeing tomorrow, Brandon asserted that they “have nowhere … to go.” That’s why he and his team venture into Africa, so they may aid those in desperate need. Much of northern Nigeria operates under Sharia law, where blasphemy doctrines make converting from Islam to Christianity a crime punishable by death. “Legally,” Brandon explained, “your family can kill you, or they can hire somebody to kill you.” His organization seeks to rescue people from imminent danger — those with “contracts on their lives” — and relocate them to refugee facilities to “help them restart their [lives].”

These persecuted Christians have lost everything: properties, businesses, and bank accounts — all seized by oppressive forces. “In some cases,” Brandon added, they “have taken their children.”

He told the story of a woman who was pregnant at the time she came to faith through Across Nigeria’s ministry. After discovering her conversion, her husband then “locked her in a room in their house like a prison cell … until she gave birth to the baby. The moment that she had the baby, they took the baby from her. She’s never held her baby, seen her baby, touched her baby. Never even heard her baby cry. They immediately took the child out of the room from her womb.” They intended to kill the mother, Brandon explained, but she escaped and found her place in a refugee facility.

“[T]hat’s just one story of probably 5,000 that I could tell you just off the top of my head,” Brandon stated. “So, we are in the business of helping persecuted Christians.” However, Across Nigeria’s mission is not merely about serving the persecuted but also about reaching those who are doing the persecuting.

As he so powerfully put it, “the other … equally important part of our ministry is reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe at Across Nigeria that … the solution to the problems in northern Nigeria is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Certainly, governments can help and investors can help and institutions can help. … However, they can’t solve the problem. Only the gospel has what is needed to solve the problem. … Only there at the cross do we find the answers to the world’s problems.”

To that end, Across Nigeria has built schools across northern Nigeria for Fulani Muslim communities — “the ones who are killing a lot of the Christians,” he noted. With over 5,000 students, these schools teach English literacy while emphasizing “the value of peace and the cost of violence.” And “everywhere that we’ve started a school, the violence has dropped.”

“[W]e’re literally changing a generation … just by giving those children opportunities.”

The goal, Brandon said, is to bear fruit. But then that begs the question: “Why does the Bible call what the Holy Spirit produces in our lives as Christians … ‘fruit’? Well, fruit is the reproductive organ of a plant. If you cut open an apple, it’s inside [has] seeds. It’s how the tree reproduces itself. And so, we go into Fulani Muslim villages, and we bear the fruit of the spirit,” because “our goal is to reproduce faith in the lives of the people around us.” And so many of these Muslims — over 7,000 — have borne fruit, with many now evangelizing their own families and pursuing pastoral training. And yet, following Jesus often carries a heavy cost.

In 2021, Brandon explained how one of their pastors was killed. “[W]e had done an evangelistic tour through northern Nigeria and dropped him off at his house. … [W]e went back to pick him up the next morning, and his church was burned, his house was burned, and we found him hacked to death in his bed.” A similar tragedy happened to another Across Nigeria pastor just last week, Brandon said.

This is the reality on the ground. These are the horrors that the Nigerian government has spent $9 million on lobbyists to suppress and hide from U.S. awareness. But as Brandon vowed, this year and every year, “We’re going to be carrying the message of Jesus Christ into the most dangerous area in the world, … help persecuted Christians as much as we possibly can,” and raise awareness relentlessly. “We’re not going to stop talking about this until the genocide … and the targeting and killing of Christians stops in northern Nigeria.”