Accusation of Genocide Against Christians: Why Nigeria Cannot Escape 

Accusation of Genocide Against Christians: Why Nigeria Cannot Escape

… President Tinubu’s Government has just been branded an Islamic Government colluding with Islamic Terrorists: How can we change this perception?

By Ata Ikiddeh

Opinion: My jaw dropped as I watched congressman Riley Moore accuse President Tinubu of running an Islamic government colluding with Islamic terrorists to kixx Christians. Remember, Riley Moore is the lawmaker President Trump has asked to report to him over claims thousands of Christians are being killed in Nigeria. Congressman Riley Moore, together with Chairman Tom Cole and the House Appropriations Committee are to report back to President Trump over possible military intervention in Nigeria. The question is, how did it come to this? I have seen protests in Kano today. But if President Trump is convinced there is ongoing genocide against Christians in Nigeria, which of those youths will defend Nigeria as America’s ballistic missiles start hitting targets in Nigeria? To describe President Tinubu’s administration as an Islamic government colluding with Islamic terrorists is putting Nigeria almost on the same scale with Afghanistan ruled by the Talibans. And we know that is not the case with Nigeria. How to change this perception is the greatest challenge of the Tinubu government right now.

At this critical juncture, it is important that Nigerians suspend emotional reactions and engage with the ongoing discourse intellectually with facts. Neither indignation nor public demonstrations will alter the position currently held by the United States. The American administration is convinced that Christians in Nigeria are being systematically murdered because of their faith. This is the narrative conveyed to President Donald Trump, upon which he has chosen to act. He appears convinced there is an ongoing genocide taking place in Nigeria and the Americans are able to prove this with their statistics and facts. Whether they are false, inflated or evidence based, do we have our own counter data? I will revisit that question later.

Many Nigerians who have endorsed the Trump administration’s position on the alleged genocide against Christians in Nigeria have largely ignored attacks perpetrated by certain Christian local communities against Fulani herdsmen. For instance, in June 2018, reports from the Plateau State Police Command indicated that Berom farmers who are mostly Christians attacked Fulani herders, killing five and provoking a retaliatory assault that led to substantial casualties. Similarly, in May 2025, security briefings confirmed that local Christian youths had killed Moslem herders and stolen cattle, leading to further reprisal attacks. More recently, on Monday, 3 November 2025, Fulani herdsmen reportedly killed at least ten Christians in Anwule Oglewu village, Ohimini Local Government Area of Benue State, including Reverend Simon Nbach, a Pentecostal pastor of the Flaming Fire Ministry. Yet, ThisDay Newspaper reported that this was a retaliatory assault following the killing of two Fulani herders by members of that community.

The pertinent question thus arises: why are attacks by predominantly Christian communities on Fulani herdsmen neither widely reported nor classified as genocide? Perhaps this is because such assaults are perceived as responses to herdsmen’s cattle destroying farmland, rather than as targeted efforts to annihilate the Fulani ethnic group. While communal and reprisal attacks constitute grave breaches of international law, they can only be classified as genocide if the perpetrators exhibit the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a targeted group. Christian communities are only attacking Fulani herders, when their cattle stray into their farmland, the Fulanis are not being targeted as a group.

Before Nigerians rush to protest America’s President use of the term “genocide,” they would do well to acquaint themselves with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, an international treaty adopted by the United Nations in 1948. This convention defines and criminalises genocide and binds state parties to prevent and punish it.

The subject is undoubtedly emotive. However, to allow sentiment to dictate the national conversation is to forfeit the argument. Any serious discourse must be grounded in the precise language and scope of the UN definition. For the United Nations, the word Genocide is not a rhetorical term; it is active and legal. This distinction is critical, especially when President Trump makes such statements as — “We stand ready, willing, and able to save our great Christian population around the world” — it lends the appearance of a right-wing Christian crusade against terrorist groups in the Middle-Belt and in Northern Nigeria. While such phrasing might resonate with certain audiences, it inadvertently alienates moderate Muslims and even some Christians who contend that these killings transcend religious identity. Indeed, armed banditry and terrorism in Nigeria have claimed Muslim, Christian, and non-religious victims alike; the violence is indiscriminate in many instances.

Nevertheless, personalities such as Sheikh Ahmed Gumi have suggested that the United States is exploiting the situation as a pretext to establish a military base in Nigeria, plunder our natural resources, and destabilise President Tinubu’s administration. Such conspiracy theories are themselves deeply divisive, fuelling sectarian suspicion and anti-Western sentiment.
And I have maintained the Federal Government should not react to Trump’s statements but respond to him, asking for military partnership and cooperation. And President’s Tinubu’s statement a few days ago about engaging the world diplomatically was responsive and in the right tone.

Ironically, President Trump’s pronouncements have achieved a surprising effect on Nigerians: it has momentarily united us across religious, ethnic, and political lines in opposition to foreign military intervention. Social media discourse reveals an uncommon solidarity — Christians echoing Muslim voices that condemn terrorism as non-discriminatory, and Muslims acknowledging that extremist rogue elements within their midst – disproportionately target Christian communities in Southern Kaduna, Plateau, and Benue States. The Federal Government would do well to harness this unity creatively and patriotically.

Turning again to the genocide question, it is undeniable that countless Nigerians — both Christian and Muslim — have suffered unspeakable loss at the hands of insurgents and bandits. However some born again Christians interpret President Trump’s interventionist stance as divine providence. To them, Trump represents an anointed deliverer, an answer to years of unanswered prayers. These are the Christians who have lost loved ones. Their anguish cannot be trivialised. Entire villages predominantly occupied by Christian farmers in Benue State have been razed, and their inhabitants now languish in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), as of 2024 there were 3.4 million internally displaced Nigerians, both Christians and Muslims — a figure equivalent to the population of a new state. Data from the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF) indicated that as of 2023, approximately 206,875 Christians had been abducted or displaced, compared to 60,845 Muslims — nearly a threefold disparity.

Sceptics, particularly within the Muslim community, have dismissed these figures as exaggerated or fabricated. Yet, Nigeria has failed to produce credible counter-data to refute the findings of the IIRF, the United Nations, or the U.S. government. American congressional delegations have visited Nigeria on multiple occasions — to Benue and Plateau States — to collect independent data from Christian communities. Muslim communities in Sokoto. Katsina and Zamfara states did not invite them.

The figures of the American congress fact-finding missions have not been factually challenged by Nigeria and therein lies our first failure in rebutting the genocide allegation. When the United States asserts that over 52,000 Christians have been killed since 2009, and more than 7,000 in 2025 alone, Nigeria’s silence effectively concedes the argument. Where is Nigeria’s own homegrown statistics on terror? Where is our evidence challenging America’s data?

In 2016, while serving as a consultant for the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) under the late Dr Musa Asake, I was tasked with designing and implementing a nationwide data-collection framework for recording deaths, injuries, and displacements among Christians. Despite a promising beginning, the project was abandoned, leaving CAN without the empirical foundation necessary to refute international genocide claims. I warned them that this was going to comeback and bite Nigeria one day.

I wasn’t wrong. Even respected clerics such as Bishop Matthew Kukah, who dispute the genocide narrative, lack the statistical evidence to sustain their position. Thus, Nigeria finds itself cornered: international actors wield data; Nigeria cannot.

President Trump’s alarming statistics — 18,000 churches burnt, 52,000 Christians killed, 5 million displaced, and 7,000 slain in 2025 — may well be inflated. Yet, even if these figures were fabricated, the pattern of violence in the middle-belt and Southern Kaduna still meets the definitional threshold of genocide as articulated by the United Nations. And here’s why.

The Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, described it as “the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group” through the disintegration of its political, social, cultural, linguistic, religious, and economic structures. The UN’s 1948 Convention refined Lemkin’s formulation, defining genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts include:
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm;
3. Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births; and
5. Forcibly transferring children from one group to another.

It is essential to note that genocide need not encompass the entire population of a group — destruction “in part” suffices. Applying this to Nigeria, the sustained targeting of predominantly Christian farming communities in Benue, Southern Kaduna, and Plateau satisfies the definitional requirement.

Further, where herdsmen incursions have led to mass displacement, destruction of farmland, and the occupation of ancestral lands, one could argue that “conditions of life calculated to destroy” have indeed been imposed. Entire ethnic subgroups — notably the Tiv and Idoma, concentrated in Guma, Logo, Agatu, and other local government areas — have suffered such devastation. Whether motivated by religious zeal or economic expediency, these attacks have eradicated the economic existence and social continuity of farming communities, thereby meeting Lemkin’s and the UN’s standards for genocide.

The destruction of churches, targeted killing of clergy, and timing of assaults during Christian holy periods such as Easter and Christmas all underscore the religious undertones of the violence. Social media documentation of herdsmen invoking jihadist rhetoric while razing Christian villages further bolsters the perception of targeted extermination.

The Boko Haram insurgency, active since 2009, amplifies this pattern. Its declared aim of establishing an Islamic caliphate in Northern Nigeria, its rejection of Western education as Christian, and its record of mass abductions — notably the 2014 Chibok girls and the 2018 Dapchi schoolgirls — constitute clear evidence of persecution on religious grounds. The case of Leah Sharibu, detained for refusing to renounce her Christian faith, remains a potent symbol of this ideological hostility.

In March 2015, Boko Haram’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS and its subsequent rebranding as the Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP) reinforced global perceptions of Nigeria as part of a broader Islamist project. Combined with the widespread enforcement of Sharia law across northern states, this has convinced Americans like U.S. Congressman Riley Moore — that Christians in Nigeria face an existential threat. His claim that “thirty-five Christians die every day in Nigeria” is the sort of figure that inevitably galvanises international alarm and interventionist impulses.

Whether or not these assertions withstand empirical scrutiny, the tragic reality remains: Nigeria’s inability to produce reliable, comprehensive data or a coherent counter-narrative leaves it perilously exposed to accusations of genocide. And on this basis is President Trump fashioning a reason to attack Nigeria to save Christians from Muslims. It indeed sounds ridiculous because Nigerian Christians and Muslims are living harmoniously together. Apart from sporadic attacks by bandits and terrorist herdsmen in specific regions of the country. Now, you and I can argue. But the Americans say they have the facts, the numbers and the stats. While we don’t! And when the missiles start falling it’s only then we will understand why facts and stats are important in every modern nation.

I am hereby proposing a National Bureau of Statistics on Security as our strategic plan as we work collaboratively with the American government.

The importance of immediately stationing an ambassador in Washington cannot be overemphasised. Many are asking, what is Nigeria’s strategic foreign policy? Do we even have one?

We all know President Tinubu’s government is not an Islamic government and the Federal Government needs to challenge this perception by putting forward – responsive, creative and urgent ideas to meet the current challenge by America. I hope to speak on those ideas in my next article. There must be an immediate change in the security situation in the Christian farming communities in Benue, Plateau and Southern Kaduna, inorder to remove that label of genocide. The government also needs to secure the Muslim communities in Zamfara, Sokoto and Katsina states. We must implement Restorative Justice in these communities after neutralising all the bandits and terrorist herdsmen.

I am sure if President Trump sees our responsive urgent efforts, I doubt there will be any need for an American military intervention in Nigeria.

Ata Ikiddeh