ON a narrow aisle of Onitsha’s sprawling main market, amid traders hawking sugar cane and labourers pushing wheelbarrows, Mr Emeka Umeagbalasi cuts an unremarkable figure. Wearing a single earbud, he tends a small stall stocked with screwdrivers, wrenches and other hand tools in southeastern Nigeria’s biggest commercial city.

Beyond the market, however, Mr. Umeagbalasi has emerged as an unlikely influence on U.S. foreign policy. Research he produces from his home in Onitsha has been cited by American Republican lawmakers to argue that Christians are being systematically slaughtered in Nigeria – a narrative that helped underpin President Donald Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes in the country on Christmas Day.

Mr. Umeagbalasi is the founder of the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, known as Intersociety, an advocacy group he established in 2008. Senators and lawmakers, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Riley Moore of Virginia and Chris Smith of New Jersey, have all referenced Intersociety’s findings in public statements and legislative efforts focused on religious persecution in Nigeria.

For Mr. Umeagbalasi, the fact that his work appeared to resonate in Washington was deeply affirming. Speaking from his home, he described the U.S. president’s actions as ‘miraculous,’ warning that Nigeria risked catastrophe without international intervention. “If nothing is done,” he said, “Nigeria will explode.”

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Central to his claims is an assertion that 125,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009. But Mr. Umeagbalasi told The New York Times that he often does not independently verify the figures he publishes. He acknowledged relying heavily on what he called ‘secondary sources,’ including Christian advocacy organisations, Nigerian media reports and online searches.

None of the U.S. lawmakers who cited his work responded to requests for comment. The White House also declined to address questions about the credibility of Mr. Umeagbalasi’s data or research methods. In a statement, a spokeswoman said only that “the massacre of Christians by radical, terrorist scum will not be tolerated.”

Reliable data on violence in Nigeria is scarce. The government does not publish comprehensive statistics on deaths from attacks or on the religious affiliation of victims, and many incidents occur in isolated areas where reporting is incomplete or delayed.

While some studies confirm that Christians have been killed in large numbers, analysts say the violence cuts across religious lines. Weak security and near-total impunity in many regions have left both Christian and Muslim communities vulnerable to attacks by insurgents, bandits and criminal gangs.

Mr. Umeagbalasi, who is Catholic, runs Intersociety from his residence. His wife, Blessing, an evangelical Christian, serves on the group’s board. He said he holds degrees in security studies and peace and conflict resolution from the National Open University of Nigeria and described himself as a highly capable investigator, comparing his work to that of CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour.

Pressed on how he verifies his claims, Mr. Umeagbalasi conceded that he rarely travels to the regions most affected by violence. He acknowledged that he often assumes the religion of victims rather than confirming it. He has said that more than 7,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria during the first seven months of 2025.

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That figure contrasts sharply with estimates from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, an independent conflict-monitoring group. ACLED recorded about 6,700 deaths in Nigeria during the same period, including insurgents and security personnel. Roughly 3,000 were civilians, and the data does not break deaths down by religion.

Mr. Umeagbalasi said he determines victims’ religious identity largely based on geography. If an attack occurs in an area where he believes Christians live, he categorises the victims accordingly.

“If killings take place in Borno today,” he said, referring to the northeastern state at the center of Boko Haram’s insurgency, “I just look at the zone where the killings take place. If it’s southern Borno, there is likelihood the victims are Christians.”

Boko Haram, however, has killed tens of thousands of Muslims as well as Christians.

He offered the example of 25 schoolgirls abducted in Kebbi State. Local officials and the school principal said the girls were Muslim. Mr. Umeagbalasi disputed that account, claiming most were Christians and accusing the government of deliberately misrepresenting their identities.

“They went and Islamized them,” he said. “Gave them Islamic names just to confuse people.”

The allegation was rejected by Alkasim Abdulkadir, a spokesman for Nigeria’s foreign minister. “There’s a lot of fallacy to his research, a lot of confirmation bias,” he said. “He’s very performative.”

Mr. Umeagbalasi said he rarely visits Nigeria’s Middle Belt, where violence between farming and herding communities has been particularly deadly. Instead, he relies on reports from groups such as Open Doors, a Christian advocacy organisation whose data has also been cited by Mr. Trump.

Another key source is Truth Nigeria, a project founded by Judd Saul, a filmmaker and evangelical Christian from Iowa. Like several U.S. and Nigerian advocacy groups, Truth Nigeria frequently describes attackers as ‘Fulani ethnic militias.’ The Fulani are a vast ethnic group with tens of millions of members, mostly Muslim, spread across West Africa, including many pastoralists.

Mr. Umeagbalasi has used dehumanising language to describe the Fulani and said they should be confined to a single Nigerian state — remarks researchers say amount to a call for ethnic cleansing.

His work has drawn sustained criticism. Nigeria adviser for the International Crisis Group, Mr Nnamdi Obasi, said Intersociety’s methodology was opaque and its figures inconsistent. “The basic addition is very, very faulty,” he said.

Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic bishop of Sokoto, the northwestern state hit by U.S. airstrikes in December, said the fixation on religious statistics obscured the larger crisis of governance. “Focus on the fact that this state is weak and doesn’t have the capacity to protect its people,” he said.

Mr. Umeagbalasi remains unmoved by such criticism. In his green-and-black painted living room, he opened his laptop to display a nearly finished report titled “The Situation of Christians in Nigeria Fueled by Jihadist Terrorism Inches a Point of No Return.” Nearby, a bookshelf overflowed with documents and plaques, including one praising him “for excellent service to humanity.”

He said nearly 20,000 churches had been destroyed in Nigeria over the past 16 years and estimated that there were about 100,000 churches nationwide.