In a country halfway across the world, Agnes remembers the song her dad taught her when she was scared. And that was most of the time. While American children can’t sleep because of invisible monsters, in Nigeria, the nightmares are real life. Would tonight be the night the men attacked, burning, shooting, and killing? “In those moments,” she remembers, “my dad sang to us, ‘God will never forsake us. God will never abandon us. Even when there is suffering and persecution, God will never leave us.’” It is the song of millions of sons and daughters now, passed down through the years of grief — the nation’s unofficial heirloom.

Like so much of Africa, Nigeria’s story is one of constant violence, suffering, and mourning. While the government looks away, tens of thousands of Christians have been massacred, buried in mass graves that have taken over miles of desolate countryside. At the hands of Boko Haram or the Fulani herdsman, armed gangs roam across the country — kidnapping, beheading, and setting on fire anyone in their path. Some are held hostage in terror camps, others are forced into brutal marriages against their wills, raped by so many men they don’t know who their babies’ fathers are.

It is, most people who have been there will tell you, worse than genocide. Fred Williams, a missionary to Nigeria, has pleaded with the West to intervene. “Since [2001], the attacks have been relentless, continuous,” he stressed. “[These are] stories of carnage and killing and horror. … Thousands are being killed,” he insists. “I’m constantly in those villages. I have interviews. I have photos. Most of what is happening is too graphic to show the media. That is how bad it is,” he tells reporters.

Just days ago, a bride and her bridal party were kidnapped in the north, as another pastor and members of his congregation were put in cars and driven away. To where, no one knows. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who’s tried to absolve himself of the world’s criticism, arguing he’s done everything he can to protect Christians, declared a national “security emergency” last week, authorizing the police and army to recruit and train additional personnel. “There will be no more hiding places for agents of evil,” Tinubu vowed. But Nigerians have heard that before.

When 300 girls were abducted from a Catholic school last month and Nigerian leaders did nothing, parents started begging America to intervene. “We almost had a heart attack,” Peter Jagaba said emotionally of his daughter Paulina’s capture. Like the thousands of fathers who have walked this dread before him, he’s asking his government to get involved. “I want the Federal Government of Nigeria to bring back my daughter safe and alive,” Jagaba told The Wall Street Journal. “I’m also calling on the American government to help us — we need help from anywhere,” he said desperately.

President Trump, who’s become actively engaged in the crisis across Africa these last several weeks, has been open about his disgust with the country’s leaders. “I’m really angry about it,” Trump said during an interview in late November, arguing the Nigerian government has “done nothing” and that “what’s happening in Nigeria is a disgrace.”

He’s leaned on Congress to find ways that members can help the administration apply more pressure there, especially in stopping the bloodshed that’s claimed tens of thousands of innocent lives. On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee hosted a joint briefing to investigate the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria with Republicans, Democrats, and experts like former Congresswoman and U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Chair Vicky Hartzler.

Together, they agreed, time is short. “The Nigerian government is trying to run out the clock,” longtime human rights advocate Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) warned. “We cannot allow this to happen. We must act quickly and decisively to save more lives.”

To be a Christian, or even a moderate Muslim living in Nigeria, Smith explained, “means to be living under the constant threat of murder, rape, and torture by radical Islamist groups. ... The most brutal and murderous anti-Christian persecution in the world — as well as the systemic targeting and killing of moderate Muslims who speak out against radical Islamists or refuse to conform with their extreme ideals — occurs in Nigeria, the ground zero of religious violence.” And while the Nigerian government has a “fundamental, constitutional obligation to protect its citizens,” he underscored, “the perpetrators of this persecution operate with complete impunity.” The United States, he promised, “is committed to standing firmly with the persecuted, no matter where in the world.”

Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wanted people to understand the severity of what’s taking place 5,500 miles away. “This is not merely ‘inter-communal violence’ or a ‘resource conflict,’ as many claim. This is a targeted campaign of religious cleansing,” he argued. “Whether it is Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province, or radicalized nomadic Fulani militants, the objective is to drive Christians out of their ancestral lands in the Middle Belt and impose a radical Islamist ideology, as has already happened across the northern states, where blasphemy laws are used to oppress.” He paused, adding solemnly, “I firmly stand with President Trump in his decision to redesignate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. We must demand that the Nigerian government disarm these militias, return displaced families to their homes, and bring the perpetrators to justice.”

Brad Brandon, CEO and founder of Across Nigeria, agrees that putting the spotlight on the terrorism happening across the country is exactly what believers there desperately need. “The attention that’s happening here in the United States is something that many Nigerians have been waiting for and asking for,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.” “Their government has been nonresponsive. … So to get the United States government involved, members of Congress involved, to see the media starting to talk about it — from Bill Maher to Nicki Minaj to President Trump, all of these people drawing attention to it — it’s a welcome change for Nigerians who are suffering under this persecution.”

Brandon pointed out the astonishing statistic that 70% of all Christians killed around the world are killed in northern Nigeria. “I’ve stood at the mass graves of friends of mine who’ve been buried, many, many times,” he said somberly. Then he paused, raising the one question that should motivate every leader act: “If the United States does not address this right now globally, who will?”