Trump Urged to Task U.S. Intelligence on Fulani Militia Networks

Former Ambassador Sam Brownback, Rep. Frank Wolf, and dozens of religious-freedom leaders say open-source data shows these groups drive a disproportionate share of Christian deaths in Nigeria’s Middle

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A coalition of U.S. NGO leaders, former officials, and organizations working on Nigeria has closed a joint letter to President Donald J. Trump asking him to direct the Intelligence Community to treat Fulani ethnic militia networks as a discrete counterterrorism and atrocity-risk problem.

Thank you, President Trump!

Led by former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback and Dede Laugesen, President & CEO of Save the Persecuted Christians and signed by former Congressman Frank Wolf, former National Security Advisor for International Religious Freedom Sarah Makin, Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, and more than two dozen additional individuals and organizations, the letter begins with a note of thanks. All are grateful to the President for concrete steps already taken: redesignating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, the Christmas 2025 strikes against ISIS targets, the deployment of personnel and intelligence support, the Joint Working Group, and the 2026 Defense Cooperation Roadmap.

The signatories encourage the administration to sustain and deepen those efforts against Boko Haram, ISWAP, and related networks in the north.

Nigeria’s Christian Middle Belt.

Drawing on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s May 2026 report “Nonstate Violators of Religious Freedom in Nigeria: Fulani Militants,” the letter notes an estimated 30,000 armed Fulani militants operating in groups of roughly 10 to 1,000, concentrated from the northwest through the Middle Belt and increasingly active farther south. USCIRF found that violence by these militants caused more deaths across religious communities over the preceding year than organized insurgent groups or criminal gangs, and that the attacks have displaced at least 1.3 million people in the Middle Belt. The June 2025 attack on Yelewata, Benue State—which killed more than 200 people, mostly Christian women and children, including internally displaced persons sheltering at a Catholic mission—is cited as one documented example.

Additional data points in the letter include:

• The Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa’s June 2026 six-year study (October 2019–September 2025), which documented 79,323 people killed and 34,773 abducted in terror-related violence; Fulani terror groups accounted for 44 percent of civilian killings (far exceeding the combined share of Boko Haram and ISWAP); Christians were killed at approximately twice the absolute rate of Muslims and at 4.4 times the rate relative to population in affected states; and Fulani groups were responsible for 53 percent of Christian civilian deaths. ORFA also documented a “Captivity by Creed” pattern in which Christian hostages face higher ransoms, greater violence in captivity, and elevated risk of execution.
• InterSociety’s September 2026 report stating that 3,083 Christians were killed and 3,193 abducted from January through August 2026 in attacks linked to jihadist groups, with roughly 90 percent of the documented attacks (including those on Christian communities and places of worship) attributed to jihadist Fulani herdsmen and Fulani bandits.

Despite this scale, the letter observes that Fulani ethnic militia networks do not appear as a named priority in public Intelligence Community threat framing. Collection and analysis remain oriented toward Boko Haram and ISWAP. AFRICOM leadership has described recent U.S.–Nigeria intelligence sharing as partner-enablement against jihadist networks rather than a dedicated effort against Middle Belt militia structures.

The signatories therefore ask the President to direct the Intelligence Community, through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center, to prioritize collection, analysis, and reporting on these networks as a discrete counterterrorism and atrocity-risk problem rather than undifferentiated “farmer-herder” communal violence.

Tasking should cover organization, financing, arms flows, cross-border movement, and any links to designated terrorist groups, and should assess whether current framing is obscuring a terrorism and mass-atrocity threat. Such prioritization, they argue, would close a clear analytic and collection gap and supply the evidence base needed to evaluate a future Foreign Terrorist Organization designation.

Copies were sent to Reps. Riley Moore, Tom Cole, and Chris Smith, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom.

Amb. Brownback, Save the Persecuted Christians and the broad coalition stand ready to provide additional documentation or briefings. Continued progress against jihadist groups in the north, paired with expanded Middle Belt intelligence collection on these networks, would give Nigerian Christians the sustained protection the administration’s leadership has begun to deliver.

Readers who wish to support ongoing advocacy for Nigerian Christians or receive updates on this and related efforts can subscribe to this Substack below or visit savethepersecutedchristians.org.

ORIGINAL SIGNATORIES

• Hon. Sam Brownback
  U.S. Ambassador At Large (2018-2021)
  Office of International Religious Freedom
  U.S. Department of State
• Dede Laugesen
  President & CEO
  Save The Persecuted Christians

ADDITIONAL SIGNATORIES

(with titles for identity only)

• Frank Wolf
  Former Member, U.S. Congress (VA)
  U.S. House of Representatives
• Paul Diamond
  Barrister
  Lead Barrister on the
  Law of Religious Liberty (U.K.)
• Suzanne Bock Grishman
  Executive Director
  Mercury One
• Nina Shea
  Senior Fellow & Director
  Center for Religious Freedom
  Hudson Institute
• Dr. Rev. Oluwasayo Ajiboye
  President
  Mission Africa International
• Dr. Gloria Puldu
  Coordinator
  LEAH Project
• Patrick Carberry
  President and Founder
  Joshuacord
• Charmaine Hedding
  President
  Shai Fund
• Sarah Makin
  Principal
  Makin Strategies
• Greg Mitchell
  Founder & CEO
  IRF Secretariat
• Troy A. Miller
  President and CEO
  National Religious Broadcasters
• Kay Alice Daly
  Vice President
  Interfaith Council of
  Greater Sacramento
• Col. Rob Maness (Ret.)
  Chairman
  GatorPAC LLC
• Reverend Kevin Jessip
  President
  The Return
• Rev. Dr. Polycarp Gbaja
  CEO
  Stride Leadership Foundation
• Reuben Emmanuel, Esq.
  Barrister and Solicitor
  Balance Chambers
• Deana Brown
  CEO and Founder
  Freedom Seekers International
• Odeh Friday
  Country Director
  Accountability Lab Nigeria
• Scott Morgan
  President
  Red Eagle Enterprises
• Ron Armstrong
  President
  Stand Up Michigan
• Dr. Jorge Parrott
  President
  Christ’s Mandate for Missions
• Patricia Streeter
  Co-Leader
  Anglican Persecuted Church Network
• Stephen Osemwegie
  President
  Save Nigeria Group USA
• Arielle Del Turco
  Director
  Center for Religious Liberty
  Family Research Council
• Michael Burton
  International Director
  Ignition633 Ministries
• Lauren Homer
  President
  Law and Liberty Trust
• Rev. Fr. Ambrose Ekeroku, OCD
  Catholic Priest
  Order of Discalced Carmelites
• Greg Young
  Pastor
  Faith Harvest Church
• Rev. Dr. William Devlin
  CEO
  Widows And Orphans
• George Parker
  Exec. Director
  Revealing Light Ministries
• Oleg Atbashian
  Media Director
  Institute for the American Future

SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS

• Accountability Lab Nigeria
• Anglican Persecuted Church Network
• Berom Community North America
• Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute
• Christ’s Mandate for Missions
• Christian Freedom International
• Faith Harvest Church
• Freedom Seekers International
• GatorPAC LLC
• Ignition633 Ministries
• Institute for the American Future
• International Committee on Nigeria and the Sahel (ICON-S)
• International Freedom Coalition
• iReach Global
• Joshuacord
• Law and Liberty Trust
• Mercury One
• Mission Africa International
• National Religious Broadcasters
• Prayer Pioneers
• Save Nigeria Group USA
• Save the Persecuted Christians
• Shai Fund
• Stand Up Michigan
• Stride Leadership Foundation
• Red Eagle Enterprises
• Revealing Light Ministries
• The Return

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