Could you introduce yourself? What do you do and how long have you been in Nigeria?
I’m an American missionary who has been living in northern Nigeria since 1994.
Do you remember what the peace was like before the violent farmer-herder conflict began?
I do. There used to be camaraderie between farmers and herders. During the dry season, farmers would ask herders to live on the farms because the manure from the cows would rejuvenate the soil. During the rainy season, the Fulani herdsmen would disappear into the vast stretches of unfarmed land (bush) and you wouldn’t see them around farms.
My first job upon arriving in Nigeria was language survey of the different types of Fulfulde spoken in the whole country. I traveled extensively in the Middle Belt and northern states and interviewed Fulani in their family encampments. My work required recording stories for linguistic comparison. The first story most of the men wanted to relate was of a time as a child or adolescent they had let the cows they were herding enter a farmer’s field, knowing this was clear disobedience to their parents’ wishes. The owner of the field would report the trespass to his elders, they would meet with the Fulani elders and the father of the herder would be called to apologize and resolve the matter by paying for the damage. The child was reprimanded by the father and that was the end of the issue. Letting cattle loose onto a farm was considered childish neglect, nothing more. There was very rarely any violence over it, and no long-term resentment seemed to be held between the herders and their farming neighbors. The farmers enjoyed the milk products of the herders and the free fertilizer and Fulani socialized with farmers in the local markets. Youth would respect elders; elders took care to resolve issues quickly and keep relationships healthy.
Now things have changed. Populations of farmers and herders have really increased. Farms are everywhere and what pasturelands remain are overgrazed. The Fulani have nowhere to “go” during farming season, and some Fulani young people make a habit of destroying farms in their frustration and desperation to feed their herds. It is not uncommon now for farmers and herders not only exchange angry words, but for young farmers and herders to have a serious fight in a field—with fists, staves or machetes. These kinds of issues are much harder for elders to resolve, and their efforts often leave youth on both sides with resentment and ongoing anger. These days the farmers in the area I live in scowl or mutter some insult when they see a Fulani, even one just walking innocently down the road to attend their market.
Is there persecution of Christians in Nigeria? Is there a genocide of Christians there? How do you distinguish between the two?
It is important to define terms: religious persecution means that you are attacked by someone because of your faith, not something else. That needs to be very clear. Discrimination means socio-economic or political disadvantage/oppression rather than violence/murder. In Nigeria, there is indeed religious discrimination in a number of local government areas (LGAs—equivalent to a county in the US). If an area is mostly Muslim, it may be hard for a Christian to get a job, rent a house or hold any political office. Likewise, Muslims have a hard time getting jobs/houses/political office in Christian-majority areas. This kind of behavior occurs at all levels in the nation.
However, real persecution is experienced by Muslim-background believers (MBB). A Fulani MBB will be driven out of his extended family, lose both his herds and his wife and children and literally have to run for his life. In addition such believers are rarely warmly welcomed and truly accepted by those “born” into Christianity, even when they faithfully live a life devoted to Jesus. They find themselves isolated, under suspicion and even in mortal danger from both their Muslim family and the “Christians” that are supposed to be their new family. Female MBBs experience these things to a lesser degree as they are considered to have less power and influence and not know much about religion, and thus they are less dangerous to the status quo.
Genocide is an orchestrated/organized effort to annihilate a group of people. That group will have a clear definition, for example: all people with blue eyes. It also means that the aggressor is not simply trying to overpower the group or oppress it, but to eliminate it. But there is no organized effort in Nigeria to kill all the Christians in this country. Boko Haram and ISWAP kill both Christians and Muslims who will not join them, but these groups are not active across the entire nation. Muslims and Christians have been living peacefully together over much of the time that I have been here. When I came in 1994, there were a few hotspots of religious violence. In Kaduna City, occasionally a Muslim-Christian conflict would happen, but that didn’t turn into entrenched warfare. There would be an odd skirmish or riot and everyone would calm down and go back to their regular lives. The first instance of religious violence I remember experiencing was the first Jos Crisis of 2001.
I was told the crisis was triggered when a Christian woman passed in front of some Muslim men who were praying outside a mosque. These men were blocking the street because the mosque was full. Furious, these men severely beat the Christian woman for not respecting the sutrah rules. Her brothers ran to the scene and the fight escalated. I have also heard from what I think are reliable sources that this incident was planned by a certain sector of Muslims in order to destroy the relative peace of integrated neighborhoods and gain political power. Back then, there were no automatic rifles, so people fought with sticks, knives, and machetes. Hundreds died and thousands of the living were left with trauma and hatred that has never been healed. Christians asked their pastors if it was okay to kill Muslims, and the pastors were unable to answer because they had never wrestled with such a question before. Some were wrestling with their own guilt at having killed already! Still, some others, Christian and Muslim alike, refused to kill their neighbors in the religious melee and protected each other.
I lived in Jos itself for three years, from 1994 to 1997. When I first came to the city, I encountered a fairly integrated Muslim-Christian population. The Muslim Hausa tribe was integrated with the other mostly Christian tribes. The few majority Muslim or majority Christian neighborhoods were formed by natural affiliation not fear or hate of the other group. People didn’t fear to go into any neighborhood because of its religious or ethnic majority. After the crisis in 2001, people began to segregate into Muslim-only and Christian-only neighborhoods to protect themselves from “the others”—basically religious apartheid. I remember coming into Jos and being informed that some neighborhoods were “no-go zones” for me because I would be identified by sight as Christian. That was very new and strange and sad to me. Another sad occurrence after the second Jos crisis (2005) was that these Nigerians in crisis were deserted by a group of people that might have offered significant help. Christian missionaries that might have seen themselves placed “for such as time as this” and focused on helping heal trauma and restore lasting peace and unity between Muslims and Christians were too frightened to continue to stay, and the vast majority took their families and left not only Jos but Nigeria and never returned.
What happened in Jos city itself was sad but it didn’t end there – it sparked conflict on a whole new level between ethnic groups identifying as Christian and those identifying as Muslim across the state. It must be understood that mob violence is common here and actual perpetrators of violence are rarely apprehended. When the bodies of Christian people killed in the 2001 Jos violence were brought back to their home villages for burial, the relatives saw red and in their grief and anger, attacked the nearest Muslims they could find – the Fulani herders. These were people they were at peace with, intermarried with, who spoke their language and freely moved among them, but ethno-religious identity trumps all. And so a group who had not killed were killed on the basis of religious identity, neither the Jos perpetrators nor the village “avengers” were ever brought to trial and the violence and reprisals have been going on for 25 years! A whole generation of young people have never known peace, never seen an effective system of justice and have suffered the holistic deprivation of an endless war. The lines have been drawn deeply and both sides consider the other a threat to their very existence. Muslims are killing Christians, Christians are killing Muslims, because both sides believe the other side wants to “genocide” them! No one is countering this narrative, and with no other solution presented, the violence will continue. In fact violence is spreading in the same ways in many parts of Nigeria because the inciting issues are not being dealt with and better solutions are not being presented.
Have the Fulani Muslims declared a jihad against the Christians of Nigeria?
No. Over my time living in Nigeria, I have known a lot of Fulani. I have been in contact with people from all over this country because of my linguistic research and other work. I have been involved in literacy efforts among Fulani in Katsina, Sokoto, and other northern states that border Niger, as well as the Middle Belt states. I speak Fulfulde, the language of the Fulani. Here is what I have observed: the Fulani are just trying to live their lives in peace with their neighbors. But over the years, their ability to do that has diminished. Grazing lands have decreased as the whole population of Nigeria has dramatically increased.
It is well documented that there is a huge demand for milk and meat in this country. The herds that have been part of the national economy are very large. The Fulani provide a valuable service to the non-Fulani population, but increasingly they have less and less space to do that. I have gone out herding with the Fulani and I have seen them trying to keep their herds out of spaces even as narrow as three yards wide! It used to be (1990s) that routes between farms to open grazing fields would be 10 feet wide. But now, so many grazing grounds have been lost that those 10-foot wide routes are the grazing spaces! As farmers plow more land for grain, they take away land for meat and dairy production. And farmers seem to have no idea of the correlation, no idea why herders are desperate and can’t “go away!”
In addition the culture of Fulani is not one in which any large-scale cooperative efforts ever occur. The social structure of the Fulani people is run at the extended family level only. A father, his sons and their wives and children rule themselves, for the most part. Wherever they are they may encounter a Muslim cleric or Fulani chief that they must respect or that they look to for help to resolve issues, but their clerics and chiefs do not form any kind of nation-wide network that could even begin to invite Fulani into some concerted action. Fulani know they must have the favor of their neighbors to survive. The Fulani living in rural Nigeria as herders are not of the Dan Fodio ilk. They don’t evangelize for Islam, they just want to live their lives quietly, and feed their families. But their whole way of life is being taken away and no other pathway for living offered. Although they have lived in Nigeria longer than Europeans have been in the Americas, still they have been labeled as non-indigenes simply because they don’t build permanent houses, live in large groups or stay in the same place all year to farm.
Unless the concerns of BOTH farmers and herders are addressed, conflict will continue, not because there is a religious war (yet) but because people are struggling to meet their needs and seeing each other as part of the problem not part of the solution.
Besides the farmer-herder conflict, there is the banditry problem. Do you have a strategy for breaking up these bands from within?
I don’t have a plan. But having avenues for honest living can definitely break these groups from within (even prevent them forming in the first place). There is a lot of desperation among the young generation, no matter their ethnicity or religion. The country has a weak economy that offers few jobs for either skilled or unskilled workers. There is a huge population and severe pressure on land for food production and housing. There is little effective governance including basic infrastructure and just law enforcement. Abuse of power is part of the status quo. Some individuals I know of have credible evidence that bandit groups are run by rich businesspeople and politicians to further their agendas. Lawlessness and widespread economic destitution feeds banditry; victims of violence are made pawns of the powerful. People I know report boys orphaned by ethnic violence being loaded onto trucks and driven into the forests of Sokoto to be trained to become bandits. These orphan boys have lost everything. They’ve seen their families and their animals slaughtered, their homes destroyed. They are massively traumatized! So who will take care of them? The bandits offer them a way to survive and even to strike back at the world that has so betrayed them. We need to offer a way to healing and integration into healthy productive society for our young people and for victims of violence and so cut off the supply line for bandit groups and their backers.
Why are American Evangelicals ready to accept the narrative of a Christian genocide in Nigeria?
Over the last number of years the polarization of politics in America has been widely observed. Liberals and conservatives have grown so divided that they are in their own bubbles of narrative and information. Each side seems to feel that the other cannot know or tell the truth. (Ironically, this is very similar to the polarization in the areas in Nigeria with long-standing ethnic conflict!) There is a subset of evangelical Christianity in America who affirm the idea of Christian nationalism, marrying the Christian faith with America as a nation. In my opinion, they feel cornered and endangered themselves and they project these fears onto Nigeria. I know the backstory of one person (whom I’ll leave unnamed), who is pushing the “genocide narrative”. This person was traumatized by the events of September 11, 2001 and ever since then has been trying to “save” Christians from Islam. Many evangelicals in America seem to approach their faith as most Nigerian Christians do: not based on a personal weighing of truth claims of any religion but on the religious identity of their parents, extended family or ethnic community. This is exactly how most Muslims think of their faith. If, instead of being a decision to live our lives under the kingship and teaching of Jesus and join him in winning others to faith, Christianity is some kind of socio-ethnic group that has to fight for power and resources to survive, we will find ourselves locked in a war for existence indeed.
To be honest, I have been flabbergasted that the genocide narrative has gained so much ground among U.S. evangelicals. When evangelicals tell me that they have the right to punish the wicked, I’m shocked because I don’t see that in the teachings of Jesus at all. I think they do not understand what the good news is! Even if it were true that somebody was killing followers of Jesus for believing in him, what does Jesus tell us to do in response to that? He does not tell us to find somebody to bomb the enemy. He simply doesn’t. Our weapon is a love that never stops, that says to the person shooting us: “I love you, and God does too.” Many U.S. evangelicals seem to have lost their trust in God and now seek to use military and political power to defend their beliefs and way of life. God does not call us to defend the faith, ourselves or each other with violence. God holds our lives in his capable hands. He calls us to live our lives so differently from the world that onlookers change their minds about who God really is and want him to be their king, too. Killing other people is not how the kingdom of God operates or grows.
What would it take to turn the conversation in the US from aggression and force to peacemaking and mediation?
Make the other Nigerian voices heard. Evidence can bring in a more balanced narrative. We need to get some conversations going about what the real causes of the violence are and what the real solutions may be. A presence on social media can help. We can also try to make the websites that have an even-handed balanced reporting on Nigeria more visible to online users in the U.S. We will need to bring Nigerian people’s real, personal experiences to bear on the narrative. We can try to get different congressmen and representatives in the U.S. to at least consider that they might not know the whole truth. We can invite people with well-substantiated knowledge of the situation on some prominent podcasts to help give truly concerned followers of the narrative the level of understanding that they need to engage in the discussion and become involved in bringing effective unity-building solutions to this violence-torn nation.
You state that the narrative of Fulani-led religious terrorism against Christians is not true. What independent investigations or resources do you rely on to substantiate this claim?
Mark Moritz wrote an article back in 2022 called “The danger of a single story about Fulani pastoralists,” which speaks about the increasing number of articles, reports, websites, and official documents that pin the blame for the widespread insecurity on the Fulani. Roger Blench, the noted anthropologist and linguist who has spent over 40 years researching and documenting the many cultures and languages of Nigeria, and who has tried to understand the conflict deeply, shares my views and has published extensively on the topic. These are two examples, I have several others.
What evidence would cause you to revise your position that the farmer-herder conflict isn’t primarily a religious conflict?
Well, one thing that would convince me that this conflict is primarily religious is for Muslims to demand that people recite the shahadah or die. But that is not happening. And even if it were to happen somewhere someday, you would still have to provide evidence that radical Muslims have won the entirety of the massive population of the Fulani ethnic group to their point of view. If this truly were all about a united jihad against Christians, Muslim Fulani would not be fighting Muslim Hausa. But they are.
How can mediators stop the cycle of violence in Nigeria?
Mediator NGOs have visited the high conflict areas in Plateau State several times since violence broke out. They had some success at stopping the immediate conflict initially after they gathered some of the leaders of the farmers and herders together to talk about calming their people down. After about 4 years the cycle of violence recurred and the NGOs were not able to convince people to meet again. The underlying issues that incite conflict and keep it going were never addressed. Keeping two groups from fighting (peace-keeping) is not the same as working to so change their attitudes toward each other that they no longer want to fight (peace/unity-building).
Peacebuilding has to be on site, and it needs to be a long-term investment. Quick-fix workshops won’t cut it. Peacebuilders need not just stop the violence but look into the causes, help the groups see each other as valuable fellow human beings, and build trust relationships. If you trust someone, you are not willing to believe the worst of that person. It’s like trying to burn fresh green leaves versus dry ones. Finding solutions together regarding how both herders and farmers can use the arable land and increase it (fight against land degradation/deforestation) have great potential to bring these two groups together and also help them understand each others’ needs and challenges. The groups need to learn to see each other as rational, peaceable neighbors again, grow in their understanding of each other’s cultures and face their challenges together, refusing the lie that the other group is the problem and violence is the solution.
You cannot force a solution but you can help them see things in a different way. It is a little bit like a true religious conversion—it happens when someone actually changes what they think and their behavior grows out of that new perspective. Mediators would need to gain the trust of both groups. Perhaps, instead of having one team that speaks to both farmers and herders, there could be a team dedicated to building relationships with Fulani herders and another dedicated to building relationships with farmers. But they both would be guided by the same principles and vision and perhaps even meet off-site to discuss what they are learning and ways they can begin to bring the message of each side into the other and create more willingness to see each other differently. A Fulani Christian man I know has a great passion to help farmers and herders live peaceably and develop trust, but his efforts, though actually wise and rational, meet mostly with suspicion and anger from both sides. Non-partisan adjudication based on a rule of law that applies equally to all is unknown here and the vast majority of people think it is impossible. For both groups, even God is either for or against them, not between them wanting all to live well together. There are deeply held damaging beliefs that need to be uprooted before the planting of peace can flourish.
You argue that even if Christians were being persecuted, violence would still be an un-Christian response. How do you respond to Nigerian Christians who see self-defense as morally legitimate?
I would walk them through the teachings of Jesus and the whole New Testament. People take Jesus’ teachings out of context and use them to prove their ideas rather than taking the posture of a disciple and soaking in the whole teaching of our Master Jesus. It is clear from these scriptures that Jesus came not only to die for us but to show us a new way to live and to open the door to the relationship with God and his people that give us the power to do so. I would use the same techniques as Jesus used – seeking to convince and never to compel.
How can you convince Nigerians who have lost friends, family, and possessions to criminals to “love and forgive” their enemies?
I cannot. But an encounter with God can. God’s love and forgiveness is given to heal and restore us to be God’s image-bearers in this broken, enslaved world. God empowers us to love like him and show people what lives ruled by him look like – what freedom from fear of death (or life) looks like.
We can be very sure that God understands what loss is. Jesus experienced the trauma of pain, injustice and loss even before the crucifixion. For example, we never hear about his “father” Joseph because in all likelihood Joseph died years before Jesus began his public ministry. Jesus experienced the malicious gossip of people who never accepted his mother’s story of the source of her pregnancy, and his rejection by so many of his own people and leaders must have hurt deeply, even though he remained focused on completing what the Father sent him to do and be. Additionally, living under occupation was a horrific era for those in Israel at that time. The Romans were vicious and recognized no authority but their own, tolerating local social and religious structures only as they kept people quiet in the land. Jesus lived his whole life under these conditions. His people, too, were looking for Messiah – the king who would destroy the murderous oppressor and put the Jews on top again. The Jews wanted a violent solution – sound familiar? But the kingdom that Jesus established is one that even the sword cannot touch. It actually makes death powerless and will bring all people under the only truly capable ruler – God himself.
Jesus was the most unjustly treated person ever, but he forgave because he saw humans as enslaved, wounded people in need of healing and rescue, not as threats to his Father, himself or the Kingdom of God. He calls us who follow him to the same calm, God-trusting sacrifice of ourselves to draw others into this whole new world of love and light. Knowing God’s love and forgiveness opens the door for us to become purveyors of the same to others.
Do you think there is a point at which nonviolence becomes complicit in injustice?
I don’t believe in nonviolence but in proactive loving of the enemy. It is inaction that leads to complicity with evil. Jesus doesn’t just say: “don’t do something bad,” he says “do something good.” We are asked to fight not with weapons that take life, but truths that give life. I refuse to be my enemy’s enemy; instead I choose to be his friend. I don’t need to save myself. God has saved me even if I lose my life. Even my last breath taken in love might shake the foundations of hate and fear in someone. The idea that there aren’t enough resources for us all and that we need to be dog-eat-dog is just a lie. Be a friend to your enemy! But this is impossible if we do not have the fullness of Christ in our life already.
Jesus did not promise that bad things wouldn’t happen to me, he promised that he will be with me when bad things happen to me and that there will be a day when he makes all things new and destroys evil completely and that, if we trust King Jesus, we will live forever with him in that new union of heaven and earth. These promises are offered to ALL people! What we need to fight is the lies that keep people away from God, not the people believing them. The lies breed fear, division and violence; the truth brings real security, unity and peace.
How do you respond to believers who feel that this framing (nonviolence, forgiveness, proactive love) places a moral burden on victims that aggressors may not share?
I think this shows a lack of trust in God. If we think God cannot defend himself or get rid of evil, we have not read to the end of the book! In the end, God wins! He makes all things new, just as he planned from the beginning. If you are killed standing for what God says we are to do, that is not a loss. This is one of the major differences between Islam and Christianity: God does not need us to carve a political kingdom for his preferred faith and defend it, he defends it himself. The kingdom of God is not worried by Satan or any evil he promotes. If we feel that our job is to stay alive to ensure that the “good” people outnumber the “bad” people, we’ve missed the point.
Furthermore, evidence points out that proactive love changes the aggressor. Of course, this is not guaranteed, but I have heard and read numerous testimonies where it has happened. The Roman soldier who mercilessly crucified Jesus was changed as he observed Jesus’ loving actions and words as he writhed naked on that pole. He couldn’t help proclaiming, “Surely this was the Son of God!”. For those who understand their life in Jesus, it is not a burden to do as he does, and the results of that obedience in the life of another human being are also not a burden. Who knows what God may be doing in the life of that “aggressor” to bring him the same healing and life he gave us?
Do you know Nigerians who follow Jesus this way?
Certainly. My dear friend M. is a Fulani man who saw the loss of everything the World values when he chose to follow Jesus and who has tenaciously stayed in the lives of his Muslim family to live out the unfailing love of Jesus before them. They are softening toward the message of healing and hope. My precious friend J. is a Berom Christian woman who gently confronts traditions in her church by creating opportunities for women and children there to study God’s Word well and meet his life-changing presence. She refuses to hate anyone and serves with all the strength God gives her.
There are others, but sadly I know many, many more people that profess to be Christians but show that they have not really encountered the King they claim. As they feel the squeeze of competition for resources and listen to conspiracy theories about herders, they are usually asking God to send his fire and kill all the Fulani. Like Muslims crying out “Allah Akbar!”, these Christians use the name of God against their enemies shouting “In Jesus’ name!” I rarely hear them cry out for God to help them forgive those who hurt them and open doors for them to fearlessly show their enemies the wondrous love God has for all people. My prayer is that people here who have the name “Christian” will encounter their King, be filled with his life and light and turn this nation around by taking up the cause of God to bring reconciliation, peace and lasting solutions to the complex issues Nigeria faces.