Christian Persecution Funding has moved from advocacy discourse into the center of Nigeria’s national security calculus. What was once framed primarily as sectarian violence in the Middle Belt is increasingly analyzed by policymakers as a financially sustained campaign supported by layered domestic and international channels. The financial architecture behind recurring attacks has become a core focus for regulators, intelligence agencies, and foreign partners.
The renewed interest was prompted by the visit of journalist Jason Burke in January 2026 whose history of writing about jihadist networks provided an outside spotlight to the internal investigations of Nigeria. The increased enforcement measures under the Nigeria counterterror finance reforms were accompanied by his visit to the security organs in Kaduna and Plateau states. The overlap of investigative journalism and policy adjustment has intensified questioning of the practices of armed forces that perpetuate the activities against Christian groups.
Financial ecosystems sustaining armed groups
These attacks have continued despite the deployment of military forces thus supporting the evaluation that liquidity rather than ideology is what dictates operational tempo. The Nigerian leadership is increasingly referring to violence in the northwest and Middle Belt as an economic ecosystem, where ransom money, illegal mining, diaspora, and foreign aid collide.
In October 2025, the National Security Strategy of Nigeria was revised whereby terror finance disruption was declared as one of its core aims. This was the beginning of financial interdiction rather than counterinsurgency that was responsive. Authorities believe that the capital flows restriction will yield more sustainable security benefits in comparison to troop surge periods.
Gulf-linked charitable transfers
Research conducted in 2025 found funds that had been sent via the Gulf-based charities reached the intermediaries in Zamfara and Sokoto. In a raid in late 2025, law enforcement agencies allegedly found ledgers that showed millions of dollars allocated as humanitarian aid but instead allocated to logistics and buying.
The complication here is how one can tell the difference between successful and religious almsgiving and diversion. Analysts underscore the fact that most of the transfers are as a result of private donors who are unaware of the misuse at the downstream. Even accidental investment, though, serves to build up. Money, as one of the security officials told Burke, has no label that states its ultimate purpose; it gets its meaning when it gets to the field.
This grey area makes diplomatic participation with Gulf nations hard. Although no official statement of state sponsorship has appeared, tightening of regulations and cooperation in compliance has become a major part of the external dialogue of Nigeria.
Diaspora remittances and hawala systems
Nigeria is still ranked among the largest receivers of remittances in the world, as it receives over $20 billion remittances in 2025. Small businesses are backed by the massive majority. Nevertheless, informal hawala systems that are fast and reliable are hard to track.
In 2025 the financial intelligence tests found that a small and steady proportion of funds were transmitted over the high risk routes in Kaduna forests and around the border lines. These channels in most cases do not go through formal banking controls frustrating prosecution.
It was also reported by Burke that some of the fundraising drives in foreign countries, which were claimed to be humanitarian aid in the North of Nigeria, were diverted in part into terrorist organizations. Since that time, European regulators have raised more questions concerning small charities and community-based collections that are tied to conflict-affected regions.
Cryptocurrency and digital adaptation
Since 2024 the digital aspect of Christian Persecution Funding has grown considerably. Cryptocurrencies that are privacy conscious and peer-to-peer exchanges can enable the aggregation of micro-donations without the involvement of traditional banking intermediaries. A report by Nigerian investigators and blockchain analytics companies reported an increase in privacy-coins transactions associated with IP clusters towards the end of 2025.
Markets in Crypto-Assets regulatory changes in Europe enhanced regulation of centralized exchanges, though decentralized systems are further inert to regulation. One of the counterterror finance analysts seniors noted that now digital fundraising has a lower entry barrier than it has ever had before and the technical skill involved in law enforcement would be crucial.
Escalating violence reshapes demographics and agriculture
The financial flows are transformed into the tactical capacity. Filled with armed groups using the latest communications systems, motorcycles, and small drones, the coordination of raids against rural Christian communities has been observed to continue increasing. Structural displacement is not limited to the number of casualties but also to human consequences.
By early 2026, according to humanitarian estimates, there are still over a million internally displaced individuals in central Nigeria. A large portion of this is based on largely Christian agricultural regions that have been attacked several times during the last two years.
Attacks on farming communities
In the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, a chain of concerted attacks took place in plateau and Benue states. In Bokkos dozens of people were dead and villages were on fire as a result of January violence. According to security sources, the ransom money used in the earlier kidnappings were the possible funds used to finance the operation through ammunition and transportation.
The cyclic model abduction that creates capital, capital that creates further attacks represents the way Christian Persecution Funding perpetuates itself. Every successful operation empowers the financial foundation to further violence.
Agricultural decline and land control
The food and agriculture organization reported that the recent grain production in some of the Middle Belt areas had reduced by a quantifiable amount in 2025. The farmers who have been displaced into camps are unable to plant or harvest nor are armed groups, which have been seen imposing informal levies on reclaimed agricultural land.
According to the interviews made by clerical leaders during the visit by Burke, the pattern was known as removal by fear. Without permanent residence, frequent attacks destroy agricultural sustainability. The humanitarian suffering is doubled by the economic effect, and it makes people more dependent.
Nigeria’s policy recalibration and enforcement limits
In response to the structural characteristics of the threat, the administration of President Bola Tinubu passed the Terrorist Financing Prohibition Act at the end of 2025. The act requires increased supervision of informal money transfer agents and permits quick assets being frozen.
By December 2025, authorities have said that hundreds of people were arrested and billions of naira in frozen funds. Foreign allies such as the United States and governments of European countries increased intelligence-sharing agreements and sanctions designations against possible facilitators.
International sanctions coordination
In November 2025, Washington added more sanctions to several individuals alleged to support the financing of West African extremists to its sanctions in the Executive Order 13224. The freeze of assets was expanded into several jurisdictions, as there was greater multilateral adherence.
The European Union and the United Kingdom enhanced the cooperation between the fintech monitoring and the agencies of Nigeria at the same time. In a combined preemptive strike of January 2026, it is reported to have broken a pipeline of transfers worth millions of euros, which was established through shell companies in Brussels.
But sanctions are institutionally restricted. Financial actors will tend to move to less regulated places and digital assets can travel across jurisdictions quicker than legal cooperation frameworks.
Judicial and evidentiary hurdles
Although there is a legislative momentum, prosecutions are still hard. On evidentiary questions, especially where digital forensic records were found inadequate, courts overturned part of 2025 convictions. Setting intention proving that money was intentionally sent to commit acts of violence has very high burdens of proof.
Coordination between agencies is also frictional. The intelligence units can collect transactional information which cannot easily fit with prosecutorial processes. Financial intelligence cannot be proactive without the ability to merge data in a smooth fashion.
Strategic implications beyond Nigeria
The funding of Christian Persecution in Nigeria has implications that go beyond domestic security. It overlaps migration policy, geopolitical competition and commodity markets in West Africa. The European governments perceive the instability in central Nigeria as a part of Sahel volatility.
International financial networks are also put to the test, through exposure, of post-9/11 designed regulatory frameworks globally. What is deemed as informal systems, anonymity in the digital era, and hybrid criminal-ideological paradigms dispense with presumptions that had previously been ingrained in previous regimes of counterterror finance.
Burke’s visit amplified international attention, but sustained impact depends on institutional endurance rather than episodic exposure. As financial investigators trace digital wallets and cross-border ledgers, a broader reckoning unfolds over how modern conflict adapts to globalization. The durability of Nigeria’s reforms and the willingness of foreign partners to close regulatory gaps may determine whether financial oxygen to armed groups is gradually constricted or merely redirected into ever more opaque channels.
