About 56,000 Nigerians –mostly Christians– were murdered in cold blood between 2019 and 2023, with their killers walking free without fear of arrest and prosecution, a report by the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) released on Thursday has said.

“Fifty-five thousand, nine hundred and ten people were killed in the context of terror groups in Nigeria within four years,” ORFA stated on Thursday after conducting research that spanned four years to collect data on violence and mass abductions plaguing the West African nation.

Senior analyst at ORFA Frans Vierhout observed that security officials often disregarded distress calls from the hotspots of insecurity in Nigeria, the North-Central zone, and Southern Kaduna because most security operations and officers were stationed hundreds of miles away in the North-East and North-West regions of the country.

“Millions of people are left undefended,” Mr Vierhout said. “For years, we’ve heard of calls for help being ignored as terrorists attack vulnerable communities. Now the data tells its own story.”

Data scientists found that over 11,000 incidents of extreme violence occurred during the yearslong research that resulted in 55,000 killings and 21,000 abductions across the country.

“In the North-Central zone alone, 3,007 incidents of extreme violence occurred,” ORFA stated in the report. “Two thousand and ten incidents involved killings, 700 were abduction incidents, and 297 were a combination of killings and abductions.”

According to ORFA researchers, Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM), a terror group, was behind 81 per cent of the killings as their members were known to “invade Christian farming settlements kill, rape, abduct and burn homes.”

An ORFA partner and analyst, Gideon Para-Mallam, said that although FEM attacked both Muslims and Christians, the latter seemed to be their main target.

“Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) are targeting Christian populations, while Muslims also suffer severely at their hands,” ORFA cited Mr Para-Mallam as saying. “Kidnappers work to Islamist goals. Where young women are kidnapped, tortured and sexually violated, hope for normal married life and family may vanish.”

Christians, according to ORFA, were the worst affected by the wave of attacks and killings, and for every Muslim killed, about 6.5 Christians had been murdered.

“Islamist extremists kill both Muslims and Christians, although Christian death tolls,” ORFA stated. “In terms of state populations, 6.5 times as many Christians are being murdered as Muslims.”

The proportional loss to the Christian community was “exceptionally high” in states where attacks were recorded, the report said.

In terms of abduction, Christians were found “1.4 times more likely to be kidnapped than Muslims”, said ORFA researchers who also discovered that “around 5.1 Christians are abducted for every Muslim in terms of local populations.”

The research authors urged international bodies to review the data in the hopes that their findings would enlighten the world on the magnitude and scope of Nigeria’s problems.