A credible voice from conflict-ridden Nigeria
Some of what you may be hearing about Nigeria is sensationalized or incomplete. Danny McCain offers an informed perspective.
Danny McCain at the peace center he directs. Around him are Nigerians who received training at his center to assist with protection against security threats.
Nigeria has frequently been described in recent years as the country where the most Christians die due to persecution. After 16 years of advocacy by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Trump administration has labeled Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” and has even threatened an invasion to protect Christians.
Danny McCain, director of the Centre for Conflict Management and Peace Studies at the University of Jos, Nigeria, is a deeply informed and nuanced voice on the situation. The following comments are edited from an update he distributed earlier this month.
Nigeria is experiencing a tragedy of incredible proportions in which thousands of people have died, billions of dollars’ worth of homes, businesses, and farms have been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes and live in camps for internally displaced persons. Over the last 25 years, we may have reached three-quarters of the number of deaths that occurred during the horrible Rwandan genocide of 1994.
Sadly, many in Nigeria have grown somewhat calloused to violence, including myself. Hearing that 52 people were killed last month at a location less than 100 miles from my house no longer affects me as it did 25 years ago. That is due to the internal coping mechanisms we develop in order to live somewhat normal lives in a conflict environment.
This is an extraordinarily complex and confusing issue. There is no general agreement even among Christians about the basic causes of the conflict or whether it is a Christian genocide or an ages-old ethnic conflict. In addition, there is no general agreement about President Trump’s threat to intervene. Some are ecstatic and think this is the best thing to happen to Nigeria in years; others see it as a return to colonialism, in which an outside power is threatening to interfere into the internal affairs of a country without fully understanding the issues.
Fixing the blame is also complicated. There are persuasive arguments on all sides, and one can also find violent and tragic behavior on all sides. I agree that one side has probably used violence much more than the other side, but no side of the conflict is entirely innocent of wrongdoing.
Nigeria has three significant security challenges:
1. Boko Haram. The popular name of this extremist Muslim group means “[Western-style] education is forbidden.” Boko Haram has a very specific religious agenda and considers anyone who does not agree with that philosophy to be the enemy. They primarily operated in the northeastern part of Nigeria, though some of the operatives took a suicide bombing campaign to other parts of Nigeria. We had several suicide bombings in Jos about ten years ago. The Nigerian army fought Boko Haram for many years and has largely prevailed against them. They are still operating, but at a much lower level than previously.
Estimates of the number of deaths related to Boko Haram range from 300,000 to 350,000. According to a Dutch researcher with whom I have met with several times, about 60 percent of their victims were Muslims and 40 percent were Christians. Since Christians in that area represent about 30 percent of the population, it can be argued that proportionately Christians have suffered more than the Muslims.
2. Commercial kidnapping. Nigeria has a significant oil industry in the southern part of the country. The government considers everything 15 feet under the ground to belong to them, so the federal government owns all the oil. Most of the communities that produce the oil have gotten little from it except polluted rivers from oil spillages and polluted air from hundreds of flares burning off natural gas being pumped up with the oil. This eventually led to a movement that tried to bring about greater fairness to the oil-producing communities. At first it was peaceful, but in about the mid-1990s it turned violent.
One of the techniques these local vigilante groups developed was to kidnap expatriate workers from oil rigs or boats. They never hurt them and did not even demand a ransom for them. They usually held the people for four or five days to draw attention to their case and then released them. However, starting about 10 or 12 years ago, criminal elements, at first in the southeast where the oil was being produced, saw how easy it was to kidnap people and hold them for ransom. This soon spread all over the country.
Unfortunately, we have known a number of people who were kidnapped, including at least three expatriate missionaries. These kidnappings are not ideological at all; they are purely commercial. Kidnappers don’t care whether you are a Muslim or Christian. They just want people who can come up with money.
3. Farmer-herder conflict/Fulani unrest. The current problem getting much of the attention in the Western world—namely, the security challenges that we are all concerned about—is, in my opinion, basically an old-fashioned ethnic clash. Some of the attackers may have a radical Islamic agenda, but I do not think that is the primary issue. Traditionally, in Nigeria and many other African countries, farmers lived in villages and worked their farms in the land outside the villages. Meanwhile, livestock owners migrated from place to place, taking their livestock with them. There was enough land for the farmers to farm and for the herders to graze their cattle and other livestock. However, for many years, tensions have periodically arisen between herders and farmers because a cow would stray into a farm and eat up a farmer’s crop. The farmer tended to retaliate by shooting a cow, and the herder would then retaliate by burning down a farmer’s house, and the retaliation would continue to escalate.
This is happening right now in Nigeria. Fulani herders have felt disenfranchised because farms are expanding and roads, buildings, and other structures are cutting off their traditional migratory routes and grazing opportunities. Unfortunately, many of them have resorted to old-fashioned traditional ways of land acquisition. They attack villages, kill people, burn houses and farms, and force the occupants to flee. They then occupy those villages and farms.
Danny McCain delivering relief supplies to a Nigerian village after it was damaged by a Fulani herder attack.
The government has not been able to stop this. In February 2023, Nigeria elected a new president, a Muslim from the southwest. Although he has said the right things and shown sympathy to communities that have been devastated, these raids are continuing. I would estimate that in Plateau State where I live, we have lost probably 600 people in the last 18 months to these attacks. I am not sure how many villages have been occupied by these Fulanis.
Probably 99 percent of the Fulanis are Muslims, and perhaps 80 to 90 percent of the farmers in Plateau State are Christians. Therefore, the media have reported that Muslims are killing Christians and driving them out of their communities. However, they are not necessarily attacking these people because they are Christians, but because these villagers have land that the herders want. It is not only Christian communities that these people have attacked. There is abundant evidence that Muslims are suffering from attacks in Nigeria as well.
I find it incredible that in the 21st century, when the Nigerian military has substantial surveillance capabilities and sophisticated weapons, the Fulanis can burn and occupy villages and the government cannot stop it. However, I believe this situation is due more to incompetence or callousness than to an attempt to destroy Christians based on directives from any kind of national leadership level.
I do not see this conflict fundamentally as a religious conflict, in its origin or in its strategies. However, it appears to be developing more and more into a religious conflict. The more the fighting, destruction, and killing continue, the more people’s grief and anger cause them to lose any objective perspective and the more they look for things to blame this on. Unfortunately, this encourages people to take things into their own hands and the endless cycle continues. So, unless these crises are brought under control, we could end up with some kind of religious war in Nigeria.
There is one other important factor to consider. In 1995, probably fewer than 500 of Nigeria’s 15 million Fulanis were Christians. Most of them practiced a kind of folk Islam and were not as strict as most other African Muslims. However, in the last 25 or 30 years, many Fulanis have converted to Christ. I have personally heard their testimonies in my own living room. These testimonies often involved dreams and other spiritual experiences that convinced them that Jesus was the way. I believe this latest resurgence of violence by Fulanis is an attempt by God’s enemy to disrupt this movement of Fulanis being converted. If the enemy can create hatred between Christians and Fulanis, this will certainly discourage Fulanis from being attracted to Christianity.
Regardless of the motivation behind it, the current situation is an incredible tragedy. Thousands of people have been killed, both Christians and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands have been left homeless. Please pray for them.