Invisible exodus: toward a methodology for estimating religious displacement in Nigeria

The purview of the current study is to estimate the religious affiliation of Nigerian displaced persons, specifically to assess the number of internally displaced Christians. Although official data sources such as the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), International Organization for Migration (IOM), and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) do not disaggregate internally displaced persons (IDPs) by religion, a growing body of evidence indicates that a substantial proportion of these individuals are Christians displaced as a result of religiously motivated violence. Because major displacement datasets lack religious identifiers, this study develops a proxy-based estimation model that infers the religious composition of displacement through patterns of targeted violence. This approach directly addresses the absence of systematic data on the religious affiliation of victims of forced displacement, offering an innovative method to approximate what existing sources cannot measure. Specifically, we apply state-level ratios of religiously targeted killings from the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) to estimate the likely number of displaced Christians in 2023. This study finds that Christian communities in Nigeria experience disproportionate displacement linked to community-targeted violence, with northwestern states Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara showing the highest relative disparities and Borno and Taraba contributing the largest absolute numbers. While these patterns align with known hotspots of insecurity, the analysis relies on modeled relationships between killings and displacement and on proxy data, so the findings should be interpreted as indicative rather than definitive. The study underscores the need for more disaggregated humanitarian data to better understand the role of religious persecution in forced migration.