Muslims

By Hadiza Abdulkadir

A political controversy erupted on Tuesday after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was seen pulling down a woman doctor’s hijab during a public event, triggering sharp reactions from opposition parties and civil society groups.

The incident, captured on video and widely circulated on social media, occurred at an official function where the chief minister was interacting with health workers. In the footage, Kumar appears to reach out and adjust the doctor’s headscarf, an action many have described as inappropriate and disrespectful.

Opposition leaders condemned the act, questioning the chief minister’s judgment and mental state, and demanding a public apology. “This is not only an insult to a professional woman but also an affront to personal dignity and religious freedom,” a senior opposition spokesperson said.

The ruling Janata Dal (United) has sought to downplay the incident, with party members suggesting there was no malicious intent. However, the controversy has continued to spark debate nationwide about consent, gender sensitivity, and respect for religious symbols in public life.

As of press time, the chief minister had not issued a formal statement addressing the incident.

By Muhammad Abubakar

The Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC) has condemned what it describes as the “sectarian and deeply troubling” conduct of a recent United States congressional delegation to Nigeria.

In a statement issued by its Executive Chairman, Disu Kamor, MPAC faulted the visit of Congressman Riley Moore, who publicly emphasised meetings with Christian and traditional leaders during the trip, including bishops in Benue State and a Tiv traditional ruler. Moore, a vocal proponent of the claim of a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria, said on his X account that he came “in the name of the Lord” and held discussions on alleged Fulani-led attacks.

MPAC argued that the delegation’s failure to engage the leadership of the Nigerian Muslim community—particularly the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA)—was a deliberate snub rather than a scheduling issue. It accused the U.S. team of avoiding Muslim victims and communities affected by violence and warned that such selective engagement risked reinforcing “extreme voices and anti-Muslim narratives” within U.S. policy circles.

The organisation said the pattern of “selective listening, selective engagement, and selective outrage” threatens Nigeria’s delicate interfaith balance. It called on international partners, especially the United States, to demonstrate neutrality and ensure that foreign policy on Nigeria is not shaped by religious lobbies or sectarian biases.

MPAC reaffirmed its commitment to justice and peaceful coexistence, urging Nigerians to question why key Muslim institutions and victims were excluded from the delegation’s itinerary.

Dr Ebenezer Obadare, a Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), recently testified before a joint briefing of the United States Congress on the security crisis in Nigeria. Given CFR’s extraordinary influence on U.S. foreign policy, as its analysts brief the Congress, the State Department, and the White House, the accuracy and balance of Dr Obadare’s testimony matter significantly.

At the briefing, U.S. lawmakers and witnesses made one demand that every responsible Nigerian, Muslim or Christian, would be happy with: that Nigeria must disarm armed militias and prosecute attackers. The renewed commitment we are now seeing from the Nigerian government, including airstrikes against armed militias, the planned police and military recruitment, and the declaration of a national security emergency are all a response to the mounting U.S. pressure. On this point, American engagement has been productive.

However, Dr Obadare went far beyond the reasonable. After acknowledging the recent steps taken by President Tinubu, he nevertheless insisted that “Washington must keep up the pressure.” To him, U.S. leverage should not only be used to combat Boko Haram but to pressure the Nigerian president to abolish Sharia criminal law in twelve northern states and disband Hisbah commissions across the northern region. This framing is problematic on several counts.

First, it portrays Nigeria not as a sovereign state but as a dependent client whose legal and cultural system must be restructured via external coercion. This is not only intellectually careless; it is politically reckless. Nigeria’s constitutional debates, including the place of Sharia within a federal arrangement, cannot be resolved through directives from Washington. These are matters rooted in decades of negotiation, legal precedent, historical realities, and democratic choice. Such complexity cannot be wished away by foreign pressure or reduced to simplistic talking points about religious persecution. Sharia was introduced between 1999 and 2001 through public consultation and mass popular demand by the local citizens in northern Nigeria, who are Muslims. Subsequently, it was formalised and enacted into law by the various State Houses of Assembly.

Second, Obadare’s argument misdiagnoses the root causes of violence in the north. Boko Haram and ISWAP do not derive their ideology from the Sharia systems implemented by northern states since 1999. In fact, Boko Haram explicitly rejects these systems as insufficient, impure, and corrupted by democracy. They consider northern governors apostates precisely because they operate within a secular constitution. The group’s origins lie in violent extremism, socio-economic marginalisation, and the 2009 extrajudicial killing of the group’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf. It has nothing to do with the Sharia framework implemented by the twelve northern states. In fact, Boko Haram rejects and condemns these state Sharia systems as illegitimate, and this is why the majority of their victims are Muslims themselves. 

It is therefore analytically false to imply that Sharia criminal law fuels this insurgency. This narrative does not withstand even a basic historical timeline. The Maitatsine insurgency of the 1970s, whose ideology and violence closely resemble Boko Haram, predated the introduction of Sharia in the early 2000s by decades. To frame Sharia as the catalyst of terrorism is therefore a misreading of history and to locate causality where it does not exist.

Third, the call to disband Hisbah groups ignores their actual function and constitution. Hisbah institutions are state-established moral enforcement agencies regulated by local laws. They are not terrorist actors, militias, or insurgent organisations. They are contrary to Dr Obadare’s claims that they “impose extremist ideology, enforce forced conversions, and operate with near-total impunity.” These assertions either misrepresent the facts to unfairly tarnish their reputation or reflect intellectual laziness that risks misleading American policymakers. In doing so, they also demonise millions of peaceful Nigerian Muslims who regard Sharia as a legitimate component of their cultural and moral identity.

Finally, Dr Obadare’s testimony, intentionally or not, reinforces a narrative in Washington that sees Nigeria’s crisis primarily through the lens of religious conflict rather than the multi-dimensional reality it is, that is, a mixture of terrorism, banditry, state failure, local grievances, arms proliferation, and climate-driven resource conflicts in the form of farmer-herder crisis. Oversimplification of this serious problem does not aid victims. It distorts U.S. policy and encourages punitive measures that could destabilise fragile communities further and restrict the fundamental rights of millions of Muslims to exercise their faith and adhere to the guidance of Shari’a in their personal and communal lives. 

Nigeria faces serious security challenges amid years of leadership neglect. We genuinely need pressure to put the leaders on their toes, but not the kind rooted in calculated distortion. There is a need for leadership accountability, but not at the expense of Nigeria’s sovereignty. And we need a partnership with the United States in the areas of intelligence gathering, military capabilities and a mutually beneficial partnership. 

The United States should not base its engagement on flawed analyses made by experts such as Dr Ebenezer Obadare, which risk misrepresenting Nigeria’s realities, undermining local institutions, and prescribing solutions that could exacerbate rather than resolve the country’s complex security challenges. Partnering with the Nigerian government enables a tailor-made approach to effectively address these challenges, rather than relying on experts who have long been out of touch with Nigerian realities beyond what they read in media reports.

The Nigerian state must do more, no doubt. But analysts like Dr Obadare must also do better. Nigeria deserves policy analysis grounded in accuracy, proportionality, and respect for the complexities of a plural society; not sweeping prescriptions that collapse constitutional debate into counterterrorism and treat millions of northern Muslims as collateral in the process.

Ibrahiym A. El-Caleel writes from Nigeria and can be reached at caleel2009@gmail.com.

By Mallam Shamsuddeen Suleiman Kibiya

In the long and complex story of Islam in Nigeria, the tension between Salafi reformists and Sufi traditionalists has never been merely a clash of doctrines. It is, more often than we care to admit, a clash of tempers—of the tone one uses, the suspicion one bears, and the verdict one passes on those who practice religion a bit differently. What should have remained a quiet intellectual disagreement has, over time, metamorphosed into an extremism that thrives not on knowledge but on rhetoric.

When Dr Idris Abdulaziz Dutsen Tanshi passed on, the reaction from certain Salafi circles betrayed this peculiar tendency. His admirers saw his death as the painful exit of a righteous man who had lived his life fighting against innovation in religion and straightening the Umma along the path of Tawhid. On the other side, some Sufi-leaning critics responded not with mercy but with long-stored resentment—reminding the public of his “harshness,” his “excessive criticisms,” and his uncompromising, even combative sermons. The atmosphere felt less like the departure of a scholar and more like the settling of old, bitter scores.

And when Shaikh Dahiru Bauchi passed a few days ago, the pattern repeated itself, but this time in reverse. Sufi adherents elevated him beyond scholarship—into sainthood, into miracle, into myth. The outpouring was understandable, but in some corners it crossed into something else: a triumphalism that painted all those who disagreed with his spiritual path as misguided, cold, or spiritually weak. Some Salafi commentators, instead of exercising solemnity, used the moment to revisit old doctrinal disputes—reminding audiences of “bid’ah,” “ghuluw,” and “un-Islamic practices.” Even in death, the walls between both camps seemed eager to echo old hostilities.

What is common to both episodes is that the extremists on either side were saying the same thing without even realising it: that Allah’s mercy is exclusive to their camp; that the Ummah is too big to be shared, but too small to contain disagreement. And this, in its essence, is the extremism of our time—not the extremism of bombs and guns, but the extremism of the tongue.

The Salafi hardliner tends to imagine himself as the last defender of pristine Islam, wielding a vocabulary of denunciation: shirk, bid’ah, dalala, and ghaflah ad infinitum. Every disagreement becomes a deviation, every deviation a threat, and every Sufi becomes a suspect. Meanwhile, the Sufi extremist believes himself to be the custodian of spiritual truth, seeing the Salafi as spiritually blind, stone-hearted literalist, deprived of the inner sweetness of faith and to stretch it even further, an enemy of the beloved prophet SAW himself. Each side constructs a convenient caricature of the other —and then fights that caricature as if it were real.

The danger, however, is that rhetorical extremism does not remain rhetorical over the long run. It shapes communities. It hardens hearts. It turns mosques into enclaves, scholars into partisans and differences into hostilities. What begins as doctrinal rigidity becomes social fragmentation. And what should have been an Ummah becomes a map of feuding camps.

Yet, there is something instructive about how both Dr Idris Abdulaziz and Shaikh Dahiru Bauchi were remembered by their true students—not those who fight for them online, but those who actually sat with them. I mean, their real students, across divides, spoke about their scholarship, humility, discipline, and service. They remembered their knowledge—not their polemics. They recalled their character—not their controversies. This is a reminder that the extremists on both sides, loud as they are, do not represent the whole story.

Nigeria’s Muslim community must now decide what it wishes to inherit from its scholars: the softness of their manners or the sharpness of their debates; their mercy or their anger; their wisdom or their polemics.

To insist that disagreement must lead to division is itself an extremist position. To insist that every scholar must resemble one’s preferred tradition is another. And to pretend that Islam is too fragile to survive multiple approaches is perhaps the greatest of all.

In the end, the Ummah does not collapse because its members disagree. It collapses when disagreement becomes hatred, and hatred finds a pulpit.

May Nigeria’s Muslims learn to argue with knowledge, to differ with dignity, and to remember that Allah, in His infinite mercy, did not create only one path to Him—and certainly not only one temperament.

By Abdullahi Mukhtar Algasgaini

President Bola Tinubu has expressed profound sadness over the death of the revered Islamic leader, Sheikh Dahiru Usman Bauchi, who passed away on Thursday at the age of 101.

In a statement released on Thursday, the President described the late leader of the Tijjaniyya Muslim Brotherhood as a “moral compass” who dedicated his life to teaching and preaching.

President Tinubu stated that Sheikh Bauchi’s loss is monumental not only to his family and followers but also to the entire nation. He recalled the blessings and moral support he received from the cleric during the 2023 presidential election campaign.

“Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi was a teacher, a father and a voice of moderation and reason. As both a preacher and a notable exegete of the Holy Quran, he was an advocate of peace and piety. His death has created a huge void,” the President was quoted as saying.

The President extended his condolences to the Sheikh’s multitude of followers across Nigeria and beyond, urging them to immortalise the late cleric by holding on to his teachings of peaceful coexistence, strengthening their relationship with God, and being kind to humanity.

By Lawal Dahiru Mamman

History has shown, time and again, that empires rise and fall. The Roman Empire, one of the most powerful the world has ever known, once ran its affairs through the “cursus publicus”, a state-run courier service that carried official messages, documents, and goods across vast territories. At its peak, that system was the lifeblood of Rome’s political and economic power.

It was through the “cursus publicus” that Rome sustained control over trade, tax collection, commercial regulation, and responses to economic challenges. It kept the wheels of commerce turning, ensured that official supplies — from grains and olive oil to textiles and metals — moved swiftly, and maintained the empire’s hold over its provinces.

But as Rome began to lose its grip on that system, communication faltered. Trade weakened. Taxes dwindled. Economic integration collapsed. What followed was a slow, sprawling decline that signalled the empire’s loss of power and the gradual rise of others.

Today, empires no longer look like Rome. They are defined by global influence, control of international systems, and the ability to shape the world order. The West — especially the United States — has long enjoyed that advantage. But emerging power blocs are redrawing the world map, and anyone can see the global balance is shifting.

It is against this backdrop that the recent noise around an alleged “Christian Genocide” in Nigeria must be understood. Following that allegation, US President Donald Trump redesignated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). The designation carries several potential consequences: aid cuts, export license restrictions, asset freezes, limited security cooperation, and even American opposition to international loans and investments.

Not stopping there, Trump went a step further, issuing a dramatic threat of military action that would be “fast, vicious, and sweet” if the Nigerian government failed to protect its citizens. His declaration sparked reactions far beyond Nigeria’s borders, raising an important question: What truly motivates America’s sudden aggression?

To understand this, one must consider the broader geopolitical shifts unfolding beneath the surface. In January 2025, Nigeria joined BRICS — a powerful intercontinental bloc formed by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with South Africa later joining. The BRICS exists largely to counter the dominance of Western institutions like the IMF and the World Bank and to promote a multipolar global economy in which the US dollar no longer reigns supreme. 

With a combined GDP of roughly $30 trillion, the bloc wields real economic weight. Nigeria’s entry strengthens its ties with major economies such as China and India, promising new investments in energy, agriculture, infrastructure, and industrial development. It also opens the door to greater export opportunities, especially in oil and natural gas. 

For a country long boxed into Western-controlled financial systems, BRICS offers breathing space — and alternatives. There is also the Dangote Refinery, with its single-train capacity of 650,000 barrels per day. For decades, Nigeria relied on imported fuel despite its abundant crude oil. That era is ending. Import figures are falling sharply — 24.15 million litres per day in January 2025, 19.26 million in September, and just 15.11 million in the first ten days of October. 

With Dangote planning to expand to 1.4 million barrels per day, Nigeria is on the path to fuel independence, rivalling India’s Jamnagar Refinery, the world’s largest. This development, naturally, unsettles countries that benefit from Nigeria’s dependence — America included.

Then there is Nigeria’s deepening relationship with China. In the past year alone, Nigeria has signed major deals on industrial parks, rail and port infrastructure, mineral exploration, and energy development. China’s economic footprint in Nigeria is expanding rapidly. Meanwhile, Russia’s growing presence across sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria’s renewed ties with France add to America’s discomfort.

The mineral dimension is equally sensitive. Beyond oil, Nigeria holds rare minerals — including lithium — that power the world’s battery industry. In a world moving toward electric mobility and renewable energy, lithium is the new oil. And China, not the United States, is securing access.

US Senator Ted Cruz once captured America’s anxiety bluntly during a congressional session when he warned: “China is a global threat that must be confronted territory by territory, nation by nation… China is pouring billions into its Belt and Road Initiative… gaining control over cobalt, lithium and other rare earth minerals… refining more than 70% of the world’s cobalt and controlling vast shares of global supply chains.”

His comments speak volumes when placed beside today’s geopolitical tensions. None of this denies the fact that Nigeria still faces grave security challenges. Our leaders must rise to their responsibilities and make the country safe for all. But it is naïve to imagine that America’s sabre-rattling is purely humanitarian. 

The United States may not be threatening a “sweet” military strike out of concern for Nigerian lives. Rather, like Rome losing its “cursus publicus”, America may be reacting to a shifting world order in which its grip is slipping — and Nigeria now sits at the centre of that shift.

Lawal Dahiru Mamman writes from Abuja. He can be contacted at: dahirulawal90@gmail.com.

Dear Nicki Minaj,

As the latest spokesperson in America speaking on Nigeria, I must clarify that the script provided to you by internal actors back home in Nigeria and their collaborators in the United States is biased and one-sided. You might not fully understand the complexities of insecurity in my country, and you have been fed false lies about fictitious claims of ongoing Christian genocidal attacks.

Here is the reality:

1. In North West Nigeria, banditry devastates the region, with Muslims frequently killing fellow Muslims.

2. In North East Nigeria, Boko Haram and ISWAP, both Muslim terrorist groups, mainly kill fellow Muslims in Borno and Yobe.

3. In North Central Nigeria—Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Taraba, Benue—farmer-herder conflicts, caused by land disputes, are often wrongly seen as religious wars. These conflicts affect both Christians (farmers) and Muslims (Hausa-Fulani herders).

4. In South East Nigeria—Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi, Abia—IPOB terrorists, who are Igbo Christians, are killing fellow Igbo Christians in their bid for secession.

Dear Nicki, insecurity in Nigeria impacts Muslims, Christians, traditionalists, and atheists equally. The narrative you received is incomplete and misleading.

Nicki Minaj, the Muslims being killed in Nigeria, and other heinous crimes being perpetrated against them do not get to the headlines of international media for you and others to see and understand. The Muslims back home in my country bury their loved ones killed in silence, for they do not believe in using dead bodies for propaganda or to attract sympathy or donations from international organisations.

If you care about speaking for Nigerian Christians, I urge you also to speak for Black Americans facing police brutality. Just as you highlighted Nigeria’s challenges, you can bring the reality of racial injustice in the US to global attention.

Just like you are calling for global international attention on what has been tagged as ongoing Christians’ genocidal attacks in Nigeria, kindly also call global attention to the silent, ongoing police brutality against your fellow Black Americans and the racial discrimination they are facing.

If Nigerian Christians’ lives matter to you, then let the lives of your fellow Black Americans matter as well.

Thanks.

Mustapha Gembu is a Nigerian citizen and a proud advocate for peace, unity, and harmonious coexistence among my fellow Nigerians.

By Engr. Abubakar Sulaiman

The Amnesty International Nigeria and some Northern Intellectuals were asleep or in a state of limbo when the Kano state government invited Mallam Lawan Shuaibu Triumph to appear before the Shura Committee and defend what some segments of Muslims considered blasphemous or disrespectful. He appeared, defended his statements, and heaven did not fall. He also made it clear that he was open to further discussion or debate.

Waking up from slumber, Amnesty International found its voice only when the ‘anointed’ Yahaya Masussuka (whom some people laughably expect to bring about a ‘revolution’ in mainstream Islam and its preachings) was invited by the Katsina state government to appear before a committee regarding his preachments. That was when they realised someone was about to be stripped of their freedom. The olive branch that wasn’t extended to Mallam Lawal Shuaibu Triumph.

Is it double standards or hypocrisy from the organisation and the so-called intellectuals? It is both. And it is a clever-by-half and calculated attempt to arm-twist a government procedure. But this is a discussion for another day.

That said, I believe state governments should find a way to disengage from organising religious debates. They should enact laws that regulate religious preaching and require JNI or CAN (or any other faith-based body) to license preachers. Whoever has a disagreement or believes a cleric’s preachment is an affront to overriding public interest should approach the court. Based on the enacted laws, the court should determine what constitutes extremism or actions inimical to social stability and thereby de-license a cleric or even sentence them to time in correctional facilities where appropriate.

I think debates on religious ideologies should be organised by faith-based organisations, or anyone who has an axe to grind with another person on religious issues should extend an invitation to a debate. Two Salafi scholars, Shaykh Isa Ali Pantami and the late Shaykh Idris Abdulaziz, extended such an invitation to the Boko Haram leader, the late Muhammad Yusuf, without any state government spearheading or supervising the engagement. Many people later renounced the Boko Haram ideology after listening to that debate. Additionally, Mallam Al-Qasim Hotoro also approached Mallam AbdulJabbar Nasiru Kabara for a debate, though AbdulJabbar used a ‘tactical manoeuvre’ to decline the engagement. The populace will then be the judge of who can present convincing evidence for their beliefs or ideology from such debates.

State governments risk falling into a quagmire if they continue to entertain complaints and organise religious debates without referring them to government-recognised faith-based organisations or a court of competent jurisdiction. It is difficult to digest, given the fear of censorship from our kind of governments, but regulation is key to taming religious hiccups and extreme tendencies while enhancing social integration.

Abubakar writes from Kaduna and can be reached via abusuleiman06@gmail.com.

By Hadiza Abdulkadir

A detailed personal account posted by northern Nigerian social media influencer Aisha Falke has drawn significant public attention as debates intensify over insecurity and religious rhetoric in the region.

Falke, founder of the popular online platform Northern Hibiscus, published a two-part account describing how her family narrowly escaped an attack during the 2001 ethno-religious crisis in Jos. In the account, she recalls waking to reports of killings at roadblocks and later watching her mother’s Christian friend—described as a close family companion—allegedly approach their home with a machete as mobs advanced toward their neighbourhood.

According to her narration, the family fled moments before large groups of armed youths descended on the area. She also recounted scenes of panic on the roads as fleeing residents warned of roadblocks where travellers were reportedly attacked and burned.

Falke’s post has generated extensive reactions across northern Nigeria, with many users describing it as a reminder of the human toll of past communal violence.

The renewed attention comes as security agencies continue the search for 25 Muslim schoolgirls abducted from their school in Kebbi State last week. The incident has prompted widespread condemnation, though it has unfolded alongside online claims by some groups alleging “genocide against Christians” in the region—claims many northern residents and government officials dispute, arguing that ongoing attacks by bandits and insurgents have targeted communities irrespective of religion.

Falke did not link her story to the Kebbi abductions, but analysts say the timing has contributed to broader conversations about the dangers of inflammatory narratives and the need for balanced reporting on insecurity.

Authorities have not yet provided updates on the rescue operation, while families of the abducted students continue to appeal for swift action.

By Umar Sani Adamu, 

For a long time, Western media outlets, foreign politicians, and advocacy groups have repeatedly described Nigeria as the scene of an ongoing “Christian genocide” at the hands of Muslims, particularly Fulani herdsmen. The charge is serious, emotional, and widely circulated. However, a closer examination of the facts on the ground reveals a much more complex and painful truth: the primary victims of the country’s deadliest insecurity crisis, armed banditry, are overwhelmingly northern Muslims.

Multiple independent investigations have found no evidence of a systematic, religiously motivated campaign to exterminate Christians. A 2024 BBC Global Disinformation Unit report, fact-checks by AFP and Al Jazeera, and even cautious statements from Open Doors, the Christian persecution monitor frequently quoted by genocide advocates, have all warned that the term “genocide” is being misused and exaggerated in the Nigerian context.

The violence plaguing the country is real, but it is predominantly criminal, not confessional. Since 2015, armed banditry, kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling, village raids and mass killings have turned Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto and parts of Niger State into killing fields. These states are 90–98 per cent Muslim. Most bandits are ethnic Fulani Muslims who prey primarily on Hausa Muslim farming communities.

Complex numbers tell the story that western headlines rarely do:  

– Zamfara State alone recorded over 1,200 banditry-related deaths in 2023,  almost all Muslim.  

– In the first nine months of 2025, more than 2,800 people were killed by bandits across the North West, according to the Nigerian Atrocities Documentation Project. The vast majority were Muslim.  

– The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom stated in its 2025 report that banditry “disproportionately affects Muslim-majority areas”.

While Christians have suffered real losses in Middle Belt farmer-herder clashes and church attacks, the scale and frequency pale in comparison to the daily carnage in the Muslim North West.

 When the clergy cross the line

This month, Plateau State Police Command arrested a Catholic priest for allegedly supplying AK-47 rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition to bandit gangs operating across Plateau, Kaduna and Bauchi. Weapons recovered from the cleric have reportedly been linked to recent deadly raids. He was paraded on November 12.

It is not an isolated case. In February 2025, another Reverend Father, a deaconess and several church members were arrested in Taraba for allegedly running arms to both Boko Haram and bandit groups. Similar arrests of Christian clergy and lay workers have occurred in Benue and Nasarawa.

Social media reaction was swift and furious: “They label every Fulani man a terrorist, yet a Reverend Father is caught red-handed arming the same killers,” wrote one widely shared post.

Why the false narrative endures

Images of burnt churches and grieving Christian widows travel fast on global networks. Footage of torched Muslim villages in remote Zurmi or Tsafe rarely does. Poor, Hausa-speaking northerners lack the lobbying machinery that amplifies Middle Belt voices in Washington and London.

As one northern governor privately admitted: “When they shout ‘Christian genocide’ abroad, the grants go to NGOs in Jos and Enugu — never to the millions of displaced Muslims rotting in camps in Gusau and Birnin Gwari.”

The way forward

Nigeria’s crisis is one of state failure, poverty, climate stress and organised crime not a holy war. Treating banditry as jihad only deepens division and delays solutions. Community policing, economic revival in the rural North, and ruthless prosecution of arms suppliers regardless of collar or turban offer the only realistic path to peace.

Until the world stops peddling a convenient myth, the people bearing the heaviest burden — ordinary Muslim farmers, women and children of the North West — will continue to bleed in silence.

There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria. There is, however, a predominantly Muslim tragedy that the world has chosen not to see.

Umar Sani Adamu can be reached via umarhashidu1994@gmail.com.