There is no genocide of Christians in Nigeria

This is another one of those myth-busting conversations I love having.

For example, I've had similar ones about:

why there is no Uyghur genocide in China;
why there was no Rwandan genocide;
why the Christchurch mosque massacre was a cover-up by the New Zealand government; and
why the Sandy Hook school shooting didn't happen.

Of course, there are way more, but my point is that I really enjoy challenging established narratives. Or, more accurately, letting my podcast guests challenge them.

PD Lawton is a South African-born independent writer and researcher who runs African Agenda, a website focused on African geopolitics.

Her work on Nigeria and, specifically, Boko Haram and the genocide of Christians, caught my attention.

Except that there is no genocide of Christians, argues PD.

I've been hearing this claim for years, and I've never quite understood why, in Nigeria, Muslims are trying to wipe out Christians.

The official claim is that Nigeria is in the midst of a systematic, Islamist-driven genocide against Christians — that the government is complicit, and that over 100,000 Christians have been killed with tens of thousands of churches destroyed.

Yes, Christians are being brutally killed. But the question is whether or not they're being targeted because of their faith.

Even the US president has jumped on board.

Think about this for ten seconds.

Would the US government really spend millions of dollars to send the military to bomb an African village for no reason other than simply helping Christians?

Of course not.

But it gets better.

It's as if Trump is the messiah, saving mankind and delivering us from evil. 😇

Amen.

It's the perfect distraction — manufacturing a low-resolution conflict between Christians and Muslims, whilst the oligarchs and public-private partnerships pulling the strings stay hidden.

Well, as it happens, there is something else going on, which is what PD's research reveals.

And it's the same agenda again and again and again.

Money and power.

'There's only one thing causing what's happening in Nigeria, and that is what is in the soil under people's feet. It's the mineral resources.'

— PD Lawton

It's not a religious war.

It's a geopolitical war.

In short, PD's argument is that the 'Christian genocide' narrative is a ruse to obfuscate what's really happening: a Western-backed mineral resource grab. The violence isn't religious — it's synthetic insurgency designed to keep Nigeria in chaos so lithium, uranium, and gold can be looted, with the media's job being to sell the public a 'Muslims killing Christians' cover story.

In absolute numbers, Muslims die in far higher numbers because the violence is concentrated in the Muslim-majority north where most of the population lives.
Christians die more proportionally to their population in certain regions (especially the Middle Belt) where farmer-herder clashes overlap with religious identity.
But most jihadist violence isn't religiously selective — Boko Haram and ISWAP kill anyone they see as opposing them, including large numbers of Muslims, Muslim clerics, and Muslim civilians.

I find this compelling.