Nigeria is a youthful, fast-growing country with an estimated population of over 235 million. According to the CIA Worldbook’s 2018 estimate, roughly 53.5% of the Nigerian population is Muslim and roughly 45.9% of the population is Christian — 10.6% of which is Roman Catholic.
While Nigeria is now home to around 100 million Christians — the sixth-largest Christian population in the world as of 2019 — numbers have proven no guarantee of protection for the faithful against intense persecution, especially not from the jihadist groups hell-bent on totally transforming Nigeria into an Islamist nation. This persecution takes various forms, one of which is kidnapping.
Although the former British colony sees millions of kidnappings every year, it is clear that many are religiously and/or ideologically motivated, especially when it comes to the persistent abductions of priests.
Terrorism and conquest
