On Nov. 12, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa held a public hearing titled “One Year Later: Assessing Nigeria’s Efforts to Protect Christians and Secure the Middle Belt” in the Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing came just over a year after Nigeria was redesignated a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) on Oct. 31, 2025. Frank Garcia, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told lawmakers that Nigeria had not made enough progress and should stay on the CPC list.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) chairs the subcommittee and presided over the hearing. He criticized the Nigerian government for failing to protect vulnerable communities. He called for stronger diplomatic action and for legislation such as the Nigeria Religious Freedom and Accountability Act of 2026 (H.R. 7457), which he and Rep.
Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) introduced in February. Smith said the CPC designation “is the beginning” but “not the end” of what is needed. He said progress was too slow and needed to accelerate.
Garcia said Nigeria had yet to fully deploy its security resources and had responded too slowly and ineffectively. He cited a July 27 attack on a Christian community in Kaduna State and killings in Plateau State in August and September. “Unfortunately, the violence has not stopped,” Garcia said.
He described the crisis as an ongoing atrocity. Riley Barnes, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, called the level of violence against Christians in Nigeria “appalling.”
He said attacks by Fulani ethnic militias are often rooted in religious persecution. According to Barnes, witness testimony over the past year shows that attackers use religious language and single out Christians for killing and abduction.
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), the subcommittee’s ranking member, described the causes of the conflict differently. In her published remarks, she said Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa terrorize both Christian and Muslim communities and that most of their victims are Muslim.
She said these groups prey on grievances arising from extreme economic inequality between northern and southern Nigeria. The south is largely Christian, and the north is largely Muslim. Jacobs also cited competition over land and water and frustration with the government’s failure to meet citizens’ economic and security needs. She called for a whole-of-government U.S. strategy that pairs counterterrorism support with diplomacy and development. Her remarks did not name extremist Islamic ideology as a cause of the conflict.
Moore, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, took part in the hearing. He said there were “certainly some positive signs.” He pointed to Nigeria’s cooperation with the United States against Fulani militants and to the reported detention of suspected terrorist leader Mahmoud Adam. “But steps are not results,” Moore said. He added that the communities whose suffering prompted the designation “are still waiting for protection and justice.”
Moore asked Garcia what military and security operations Nigeria had carried out to dismantle militia strongholds and kidnapping camps in Benue and Plateau. He also asked why those two states, among the worst affected, were left out of the latest expansion of the federal forest guard initiative.
The 10 states covered by the expansion are Borno, Sokoto, Yobe, Adamawa, Niger, Kwara, Kebbi, Kaduna, Edo and Kogi. Moore noted that the 1,000 forest guards President Bola Tinubu had approved for Plateau had yet to be deployed. “We cannot take this CPC designation off of this country. They have not done enough,” Moore said.
The Daily Caller reported on Oct. 2 that Adam was arrested early on Sept. 12 at his compound in Plateau State, where he is a prominent Fulani community leader. A former U.S. intelligence officer with expertise in Islamist terrorism described Adam to the outlet as the secret head of the Fulani Ethnic Militia in Plateau State and the surrounding Middle Belt states. Masara Kim of TruthNigeria reported that the arrest followed confessions from detained terrorists and the collection of other evidence.
A Muslim Fulani whistleblower named Hassan told the Daily Caller he was in the room in 2024 when Sen. Shehu Buba, then chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Intelligence, called military authorities and demanded that they release Adam after an earlier arrest.
Adam was released a few days later. Photos posted on Facebook by Adam’s senior adviser, Abdullahi Yusuf, show Adam at Buba’s home during a 2023 celebration of Buba’s election victory.
Buba did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment. The State Department declined to say whether American pressure led to the September arrest. A department spokesperson said, “There remains a shocking level of violence against Christians in the Middle Belt committed by Fulani ethnic militias.” Nigerian authorities have not confirmed the arrest, announced charges or said where Adam is held. In an Oct. 3 post, Moore called Adam “a radical Islamic Fulani terrorist leader responsible for the killings of countless Christians.”
Calls for military action in the Middle Belt predate the hearing. On Dec. 25, 2025, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) carried out a strike in Sokoto State. AFRICOM said the strike killed multiple ISIS terrorists in ISIS camps. The target was the Islamic State Sahel Province, known locally as Lakurawa.
On Dec. 26, Chief Iorbee Ihagh, president-general of Mzough U Tiv, said the operation should be extended to Benue to stop attacks on Christian communities. Judd Saul, founder of TruthNigeria, said in a Dec. 26 statement that if President Trump is serious about saving Christians, “he needs to go after the right enemy and that’s the Fulani ethnic militia.”
At an early-January consultation dinner in Makurdi, former Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa said, “The US air strikes should have started here before going to Sokoto. The US air strikes are long overdue in Benue State.”
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