Climate Change or Genocide? The Modern-Day Christian Persecution in Nigeria – The

On Aug 19, 2023

Last month, a reported 37 Nigerian Christians went to their eternal reward at the hands of Muslim jihadists in Nigeria. The rest of the world ignored them, just as they ignored the more than 1,000 Christians who were killed in the first 100 days of 2023 and the 5,068 killed in 2022.

In 2022, Nigeria accounted for 89 percent of martyred Christians worldwide. Some might call that a “persecution” or even a “genocide” — the U.S. government refers to it as “banditry and other criminality,” blaming “climate change” for the violence.

Persecution of Christians in Nigeria

Persecution of Christians is nothing new in Nigeria — they have always been an ill-favored minority — however, the problem has intensified over the last few years. “We’ve seen increasing episodes [of persecution] in the last 10 years specifically,” Greg Kelley, CEO of World Mission, said. “But it’s been this way for generations, to be honest with you. It just happens to be accelerating over the last 10 to 12 years.” (READ MORE: Presbyterianism Lost Its Clout When It Embraced Modernism)

The violence tends to be aimed at Christian farmers in the northern region of the country. “Fulani cattle herders travel all over the country and terrorize the people. They heard their animals to people’s farms and eat up all their crops… There is nothing the owners can do. If they chase them away, be rest assured that your village will be attacked at night,” Chukwuemeka Offor, a Nigerian writer, said in the Albuquerque Journal, commenting that the fear of “extremist violence” is palpable.

In addition to Fulani killings, the Muslim terrorist group Boko Haram — which made international headlines when it kidnapped 276 students from a girls’ school in Chibok in 2014 — and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) “want to eliminate the presence of Christianity in Nigeria,” according to the U.K. watchdog Open Doors.

In fact, Nigeria, which is Africa’s most populous nation, “is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, even though Christians make up nearly half of Nigeria’s population of 200 million.” During a senate hearing in February, Rabbi Abraham Cooper told Congress that Nigeria’s situation amounts to “slow-motion genocide.”

While it might seem like explicit attacks on Christian villages, such as the ones that took place in May, or mass murders in Christian churches would indicate that religious persecution was underway — the U.S. State Department seems committed to dismissing the problem as skirmishes between farmers over resources. (READ MORE: God Performs a Miracle at World Youth Day and Goes Viral)

In its 2022 “Report on International Religious Freedom: Nigeria,” the State Department said:

Much of the violence involved predominantly Muslim herders and, depending on location, either predominantly Christian or Muslim farmers… banditry and other criminality, not animosity between particular religious groups or on the basis of religion, were the primary drivers of intercommunal violence.

Biden Administration Blames Climate Change

Given that it refuses to recognize the religious nature of the conflicts in Nigeria, the Biden administration’s response has been to turn a blind eye — for the most part. In 2021, just before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Nigeria, the country was removed from the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), an act that reversed the Trump administration’s decision in December 2020 to blacklist Nigeria.

It’s not that the Left has decided to totally ignore the violence — they have just decided to shift the blame. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, an institution you might think would be particularly sensitive to religious genocide, pointed to climate change as a source of conflict in the region.

The ongoing conflict between farming and herding populations in Nigeria exemplifies how climate change can intensify conflict between communities and place certain populations at increased risk of mass atrocities…. Although it is very difficult to establish a definitive link between a broad, long-term phenomenon like global climate change with conflict trends in a specific location, there are strong reasons to believe that climate change is at least partly to blame for the deterioration of intercommunal relations in Nigeria.

Of course, the World Economic Forum agrees, claiming that “climate change is partly to blame” for the increase of violence across the West African Sahel. (READ MORE from the author: The World’s Oldest Christian Community Could Be the Victim of Genocide)

The climate change narrative allows Western governments to absolve the Nigerian government — which is supposed to be a democracy — of any fault. When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came to power in May, the Biden White House sent the new administration “warm wishes.” If Tinubu is supposed to solve the problem of violence in Nigeria, he seems like the wrong man for the job. Prior to his election in February, he was fully endorsed by the leaders of the Fulani communities — the same communities executing Christians.

Instead of receiving the attention and support they need from an administration committed to “human rights,” Nigerian Christians are left to mourn their thousands of dead and attempt to survive a slow-motion genocide. Tertullian once said in the midst of another persecution that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church — Nigeria seems like fertile ground.

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