TruthNigeria: U.S. Christian Group Marks Christmas with Songs for Leah Sharibu
By Ezinwanne Onwuka | TruthNigeria | December 24, 2025
St. Mary’s Kidnapped Schoolchildren in Nigeria
By Ezinwanne Onwuka
While the world hums Joy to the World, the Christmas melodies cutting through Nigeria’s festive season tells a different story. Leah, Did You Know? and Bring the Children Home This Christmas interrupt Silent Night with a painful reminder that, for hundreds of Nigerian families, the night is anything but calm.
Keeping Leah’s Name Alive
Leah, Did You Know? centers on Leah Sharibu, a Christian schoolgirl abducted at age 14 by the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Boko Haram splinter group. She was taken from the Government Girls Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State, in February 2018.
More than 100 girls were kidnapped during the attack. Most were later released. Leah, now 22, was not. She was reportedly held back for refusing to deny Jesus Christ and renounce her Christian faith. More than seven years later, she remains in captivity, despite repeated assurances from Nigerian authorities that efforts to secure her release are ongoing.
As her family and many Christians in Nigeria and the United States hold on to the hope that Leah will someday return home, Dede Laugesen, president of the U.S.-based nonprofit Save the Persecuted Christians (STPC), released Leah, Did You Know? to keep Leah’s story alive. The song was co-written with Oleg Atbashian.
Laugesen told TruthNigeria that the song grew out of a deliberate challenge within her coalition to use Christmas music to honor Nigeria’s captive children.
“Our Save the Persecuted Christians coalition members took up a challenge to write Christmas songs to honor the captive children of Nigeria, including those most recently in the news from St. Mary’s Catholic boarding school in Niger State and others we have advocated for over the years, like Leah Sharibu, whose fearless faith has inspired Christians worldwide,” she said.
Laugesen also accused Nigerian authorities of lacking the political will to rescue Leah. In her words, “I believe if the Nigerian government wanted to rescue Leah, they could do so today. They know where she is held. They have no will to rescue her.”
A Prayer for the Papiri Children
Seven years after the Dapchi abduction, the nightmare repeated itself — this time in north-central Nigeria.
On November 21, 2025, terrorists attacked St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, about 140 miles northwest of Minna, the capital of Niger State. In a midnight raid, they abducted 303 schoolchildren and 12 teachers (eight males, four females).
Fifty hostages escaped within hours. TruthNigeria can exclusively report that 35 of the captives escaped into the forest on their own initiative, according to school authorities. The terrorists freed 100 more on December 8 after talks with authorities. Then, on Dec.20, the terrorists released the remaining 130 pupils and staff still held hostage. The attack reopened wounds from Dapchi, Chibok, and other school raids that have scarred northern Nigeria in recent years.
On December 9, STPC released Bring the Children Home This Christmas, written by Martha Hudson and Oleg Atbashian. The song serves as both a lament and a prayer.
“When I pray, I pray for Nigeria’s children. I pray for the 165 still missing from Niger…. I pray for Leah without fail and for the 82 Chibok girls who will once again not grace their family hearth on Christmas Day,” Laugesen told TruthNigeria.
Speaking as both an advocate and a mother of six, she said the pain of child abduction is unmatched. Her prayer, she added, is that families will celebrate not only the birth of Christ, but the return of their own children.
“I pray for peace across Nigeria but am consumed with concern for those who will undoubtedly be targeted as the holy day draws near,” she said. “I pray Americans will listen to these songs and join our effort to bring hope to the persecuted this year and next.”
Leah Sharibu is set to spend yet another Christmas far from her family, and dozens of children abducted from an ECWA Church in Kwara State remain in captivity. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s terrorism crisis — even as it draws increasing attention from the U.S. government — shows little sign of easing.
Against that grim backdrop, Laugesen’s songs are slowly gaining traction. Bring the Children Home This Christmas crossed 300 views within a week of its release while Leah, Did You Know? has logged more than 200 views.
“Bring the Children Home this Christmas and Leah, Did You Know? are more than songs. These are not merely Christmas songs; they are sonic documentaries, urgent bulletins set to music, forcing a global audience to bear witness to a specific and sustained agony in Northern Nigeria,” David Idah, a regional director with the International Human Rights Commission, told TruthNigeria.
“Dede Laugesen and her team do not just deserve commendation; they perform a sacred duty that has been abdicated locally…. Their work is a mirror held up to a global church, and specifically to Nigerian Christian leadership, revealing a stark image of neglected responsibility.”
For Laugesen, “The hope is that these songs will help keep Americans engaged on the genocide of Christians in Nigeria. We cannot allow the long break between now and the New Year to deflate the momentum President Trump started with his [CPC] designation.”