Baptist pastor Samuel Nandi was on his way to church on Sunday morning, September 20, when gunmen ambushed and shot him dead in Maraban Kantoma, near Dorowa Babuje village in Barkin Ladi County, Plateau State.

His church secretary was also killed in the attack, while his son was critically wounded, according to residents.

Nandi was among at least nine people reported killed in a series of attacks across central Nigeria. His death occurred 12 days after the latest casualty count released by Equipping the Persecuted (ETP), a U.S.-based nonprofit organization.

According to ETP, 4,216 Christians were killed in Nigeria between January 1 and September 8, 2026, an average of 16.8 deaths per day, or approximately one every 86 minutes.

The organization describes the figure as a minimum estimate rather than a complete tally. ETP says its registry is compiled from field reports, eyewitness and survivor accounts, and local sources. It says deaths are added only after names, incidents and supporting evidence have been reconciled.

ETP also estimates that more than five million Christians have been displaced and that more than 600 Christian communities have been destroyed or emptied.

Those figures are ETP's estimates and are not national statistics compiled by the United Nations.

Because the latest ETP count closed on September 8, the deaths reported in subsequent attacks, including Nandi's, are not included in the 4,216 figure.

Nandi was reportedly among at least eight Christians killed in Barkin Ladi County over the weekend.

On the evening of September 19, five Christians were reportedly killed when armed men ambushed residents in Gana-Ropp village.

In neighboring Benue State, eight Christians were also reported killed in Ayilamo, Logo County, on September 10.

Those deaths occurred after ETP's September 8 reporting cutoff and therefore do not appear in its latest total.

The ETP findings received international attention the following week.

EWTN News Nightly, a Washington-based program of the Catholic broadcaster Eternal World Television Network, reported on September 23 under the headline, “New Report: 1 Christian Is Killed Every 86 Minutes in Nigeria, on Average.”

ETP founder Judd Saul appeared on the program to discuss the organization's findings and its assessment of the security situation in Nigeria.

Saul, a documentary filmmaker, entrepreneur and missionary, has worked in Nigeria since 2011 and says he continues to travel to the country several times a year.

In a statement released that week, Saul called for stronger action from both the Nigerian and U.S. governments.

“America cannot continue to issue statements of concern while Christians are being slaughtered and entire communities are erased,” Saul said.

He also accused the Nigerian government of failing to adequately protect Christian communities and alleged that the scale of the violence was being obscured.

ETP attributes much of the violence to armed networks it says are linked to radical Islamist groups. The organization says Fulani-linked armed networks account for more documented deaths in its database than Boko Haram and ISWAP combined.

The distinction is important, however: Fulani is an ethnic identity, and the presence of armed groups described as Fulani-linked does not mean that Fulani Nigerians generally are involved in or support the violence. Millions of Fulani Nigerians are civilians, including farmers, herders, traders and public servants.

The violence across Nigeria's Middle Belt is frequently described as farmer-herder conflict, reflecting longstanding disputes over land, grazing routes and access to resources.

ETP argues that the description does not fully explain attacks on Christian communities and religious leaders. The organization points to incidents such as the killing of a pastor traveling to a Sunday church service as evidence that some attacks extend beyond conventional land or grazing disputes.

Security analysts and Nigerian authorities have also described the country's violence as involving multiple and overlapping factors, including communal conflict, criminality, extremist insurgencies, land disputes and competition over resources.

ETP says U.S. security cooperation with Nigeria has focused heavily on ISIS-linked groups in the Northeast, while much of the violence documented by the organization occurs in the Middle Belt, including Benue, Plateau, southern Kaduna, Nasarawa and Taraba states.

In a September 18 statement, ETP called for greater efforts to identify and disrupt militant financing, weapons supply and logistics networks. It also urged authorities to improve the process for responding to credible warnings of attacks.

The organization has further called for Nigeria to remain on the U.S. list of Countries of Particular Concern until it demonstrates measurable improvements in civilian protection, prosecutions, the safe return of displaced people and the release of captives.

ETP says its network, including TruthNigeria, has issued more than 200 operational terror alerts and recorded an accuracy rate of 93 percent. The organization acknowledges that these figures have not been independently audited.

The alerts are distributed through a smartphone application and are accompanied by reporting and a Terror Tracker map.

According to ETP, one alert issued during the September attacks helped prevent a larger massacre by giving residents time to flee.

But in Barkin Ladi, the warning came too late for Pastor Samuel Nandi.

He was already on the road to church when the gunmen struck.