The National Human Rights Commission has said that although alarming violence continues, the rate of killings and kidnappings dropped in October.
NHRC executive secretary Tony Ojukwu disclosed this at the presentation of the October 2025 Human Rights Situation Dashboard, a monthly report for tracking the human rights violations across the country.
“In the month under review, we recorded a general drop in both killings and abductions compared to the previous month of September, a possible indication of the success of our Armed Forces and Security institutions,” Mr Ojukwu said.
“However, we still recorded alarming violence, killings, and abductions reached alarming peaks, with hundreds of lives lost in coordinated attacks across Niger, Borno, Plateau, Kaduna, Kogi, and Kwara states,” he added.
According to Mr Ojukwu, in October 2025, the commission documented 406,088 complaints, and over 160 incidents of human rights violations were monitored.
“Our Observatory has recorded incidents of communal violence, insurgent attacks, and human rights abuses related to insecurity, which continue to affect communities disproportionately,” Mr Ojukwu said. “Farmers, herders, women, children, and entire communities have suffered attacks and displacements. I must remind us that these are not statistics; they are Nigerian mothers, fathers, and children whose dignity has been violated.”
Calling for action to stem widespread violence and human rights violations, Mr Ojukwu said. “There is an urgent need for targeted interventions by both state and non-state actors to address these violations and protect vulnerable populations.”
In addition, Mr Ojukwu spoke about alleged Christian genocide in Nigeria and the U.S. threat to invade the country to eliminate terrorists behind the killings.
“The threat from the United States should be seen as an opportunity to reform our approaches to terrorism and conflict in Nigeria, emphasising civilian protection and accountability for perpetrators,” Mr Ojukwu said. “We should as a nation get the narrative correctly so that we can have the right diagnosis. Boko Haram and ISWAP have the ideology of Islamizing Nigeria. I don’t think there is any argument about that.”
Boko Haram and ISWAP “believe some Nigerian Muslims are not true Muslims and therefore should be killed like other Christians, hence the attack on mosques and churches”, the NHRC chief explained.
Mr Ojukwu added, “This has led to the killing of Christians and Muslims who do not agree with Boko Haram. So the common enemy here is Boko Haram, who is surely killing Christians and Muslims in Nigeria for religious reasons.”
