Rev. Ezekiel Dachomo says a death threat has followed the July 12 attack that killed nine members of his extended family in Plateau State, turning a massacre on a family compound into a direct warning that he could be next. The pastor said the attackers asked, “where is the father of this house?” before opening fire and killing even a two-month-old baby.
Dachomo’s account has made him the person at the center of a fight over how far violence against Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt has gone and who is expected to answer for it. He said on X that Fulani herdsmen sent a threatening letter to him and members of his church a few days ago, and that it vowed to attack him and kill him soon, just as they killed nine of his relatives.
He wrote, “Now they say I will be next. But I ask the world, what is my crime?” and added, “Is my crime that I tell the stories of persecuted Christians in Nigeria, so the world will not forget them?” Those words landed at a moment when the State Department and a leading U.S. Christian nonprofit are pressing the Nigerian government to do more, with the State Department calling the violence “a shocking level of violence against Christians.”
The pastor’s warning also exposed the gap between public recognition and physical safety. Judd Saul said the Islamist Fulani ethnic militia hate Pastor Ezekiel and targeted him because he is waking up Christians to the reality of what they are facing, while President Trump highlighted Dachomo on social media this past week and showed him presiding over the funeral of some 20 believers. That attention has not stopped the threats; it has only made his name more visible.
Dachomo said the burden is already overwhelming. He said he had to conduct over 70 mass burials of Christians by the end of 2025, a number that suggests the July 12 killings were not an isolated horror but part of a wider pattern now pressing harder on one pastor and his community. What remains unanswered is whether Nigerian authorities have identified anyone for the attack or the later threat, and whether the public pressure now building will lead to more than denunciations.
