The United States House of Representatives will on Thursday, November 12, hold a congressional hearing on Nigeria’s efforts to protect Christians and tackle insecurity in the Middle Belt, with Republican lawmaker Chris Smith leading the session for the 14th time.
According to a statement issued by Smith’s office on Monday, the hearing is titled “One Year Later: Assessing Nigeria’s Efforts to Protect Christians and Secure the Middle Belt” and will hold at 11am at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC .
Smith’s office said the session will assess “the current state of religious violence perpetrated by radical Islamists, such as Boko Haram and Fulani terrorists, against Christians in Nigeria; the Nigerian government’s efforts to curb the persecution and punish those responsible for committing atrocities against Christian and non-radical Muslim communities; and the steps the United States can take to ensure that Nigerian officials are addressing and preventing the systemic violence against Christians and non-radical Muslims by Islamist extremists” .
The first panel will feature Frank Garcia, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Riley Barnes, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour.
The second panel will include Nina Shea, senior fellow and director of the Centre for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute; Ryan Brown, chief executive officer of Open Doors US; and Oge Onubogu, director and senior fellow of the Africa Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies .
The hearing will be streamed live on YouTube .
This will be Smith’s 14th congressional hearing exclusively on Nigeria. In November 2025, he chaired a hearing after President Donald Trump’s redesignation of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” .
In May 2016, he also chaired a hearing on “The U.S. role in helping Nigeria confront Boko Haram and other threats in northern Nigeria” .
The hearing comes amid heightened international scrutiny of religious violence in Nigeria.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its 2026 annual report that Nigeria is facing “a terrifying crisis of religious violence,” which has claimed at least 53,000 lives since 2009. The commission added that “in the last five years alone,” 21,000 lives had been lost, and millions had been forced to flee their homes .
Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List found that of the 4,849 Christians killed for their faith worldwide, 3,490 were in Nigeria—about 72 per cent of the global total. The report also noted that Christians in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for nearly half of all sexual violence against Christians .
The violence has been attributed to multiple actors, including Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province, and armed Fulani militants. A USCIRF report published in May 2026 estimated that about 30,000 armed Fulani militants are operating across Nigeria, with attacks intensifying insecurity particularly across the Middle Belt and parts of Southern Nigeria .
The Nigerian government has consistently rejected allegations that the violence is religiously motivated, arguing that the crisis is rooted in banditry, farmer-herder conflicts and economic pressures. In December 2025, President Bola Tinubu classified kidnappers and violent armed groups, including Fulani militants, as terrorists .
The hearing also follows deepening military ties between Washington and Abuja. After Trump’s 2025 designation of Nigeria as a country of particular concern, the United States carried out a military strike against Islamic State-linked militants in Nigeria on Christmas Day .
Nigeria and the United States have since strengthened military cooperation, including the deployment of 200 US troops to train Nigerian military personnel in counterterrorism operations .
Smith has been among US lawmakers pushing allegations of Christian genocide in Nigeria, a claim the Nigerian government has repeatedly denied.
