Nigerian priest: Those responsible for killing Christians, Muslims should be held accountable

Rome Newsroom, Nov 25, 2025 / 11:30 am

Nigerian priest Father Mathias Ashinnoitian Adugba says more must be done to hold people accountable for the deaths of Christians and Muslims in the country.

Amid increasing media reports of religious persecution and violence in Africa’s most populous nation, Adugba told EWTN News reporter Valentina Di Donato that the “roots” of the multilayered conflict must first be exposed before justice for victims can be achieved.

“We need to ask who are those [people] sponsoring this problem because this is not a natural disaster. This is a human disaster,” he said in the exclusive interview.

“Whether it is the Muslims that are killed or the Christians that are killed it is enough for all of us to unitedly say, ‘Enough is enough,’” he said.

Last week, Pope Leo XIV told journalists gathered outside his Castel Gandolfo residence that “Christians and Muslims have been slaughtered” in Nigeria as a result of a conflict driven and further complicated by terrorism and economic factors.

“I think it’s very important to seek a way for the government, with all peoples, to promote authentic religious freedom,” the pontiff told journalists on Nov. 18.

According to Adugba, the country’s political volatility has left many Nigerians feeling helpless and disillusioned as they continue to frequently hear news of violent attacks, abductions, and murders in the country’s north.

“We need to hold our leaders accountable. We need to hold our institutions [and] our systems accountable,” he told EWTN News. “We need a judiciary that will hold somebody accountable for murdering another person.”

“If we cannot hold these institutions accountable or hold these individuals who commit these crimes accountable it becomes a problem,” he continued. 

“Sometimes we hear that somebody has been arrested, and before you know it, he has been set free. Why? Because the sponsors are the problem,” he said.

Recalling when he lived at a seminary in Jos, the capital city of Nigeria’s north-central Plateau state, Adugba said he and his peers witnessed great bloodshed while training for the Catholic priesthood.

“I remember that, as seminarians, we literally saw people being burnt alive,” Adugba told Di Donato.

“This persecution has emboldened our faith. It has made us stronger,” he said after recalling a funeral he attended of a seminarian who was burned to death in a rectory in Kaduna state. 

“Going back to the early Christians, persecution has always emboldened faith because you see somebody giving all, giving his all, and dying,” he told EWTN News. 

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church and so we take that really seriously,” he said.