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