Genocide: Obfuscation and Clarifications – Abdul Mahmud 

By Abdul Mahmud

The word genocide carries the weight of humanity’s darkest memories. It is a grave word. It names a crime so monstrous that it unsettles the conscience of the world. But, in our country, it is a word many deliberately defang, in order to hide what is plain to see. Genocide means the deliberate destruction of a people. It is not an accident. It is not a tragedy of random violence. It is a conscious effort to erase a group because of who they are. The United Nations defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Intent is what separates genocide from murder. It is what separates extermination from war.

To destroy a people’s faith, their language, their history, or their very name is to commit genocide. It happened to the Jews in Europe. It happened to the Tutsis in Rwanda. It happened to the Yazidis in Iraq. Each time, the world looked on as hate gathered and turned into slaughter. In these crimes, there was a pattern. The victims were first dehumanised. They were called names. Their faith was mocked. Their existence was painted as a threat. Then came silence. Then came violence.

Today, our country walks a dangerous path. Across the Middle Belt, particularly in the North-Central, in the North-East, Christian communities have been targeted. Churches have been burnt. Villages wiped out. Pastors killed. The scale is massive. The intent is clear. It is to erase people for their faith. Recently, the highest level of political governance in the United States raised alarm. The U.S. Congress debated it. President Trump threatened to intervene. The evangelical movement in America cried out. Celebrities like Nicki Minaj echoed the cry. The world took notice. The images were too haunting to ignore. Yet, within our country, there are those who seek to blur the truth. One of the more notable blurters of truth in recent weeks is Pastor Wale Adefarasin. Hear him: “For forty years that I have been a Christian, there have been killings in Southern Kaduna, killings on the Plateau, there have been riots. Sometimes, I think it was in France, an image of Prophet Muhammad was defaced. Who remembers that? And as a result of that, there were killings of Christians in Nigeria.

And so, it’s nothing new. It doesn’t amount to genocide. The way the West are (sic) talking about it, it’s as if a Christian steps on the street, his head will be blown off… I’m trying to understand this sudden love for Christians. Is it because we now have one of the largest refineries in the world, and no longer have to ship raw materials abroad and bring the finished products? Or is it because of the twenty-first century minerals that we now have in our earth, which are used to generate nuclear power for electric vehicles? Are those the reasons our friends are threatening to invade our country to defend and protect Nigerian Christians?”. Pastor Adefarasin’s remarks attempt to place the killings within a long history of religious violence, but they also trivialise the ongoing slaughter. By suggesting that the renewed Western concern for Nigerian Christians is motivated by economic interests rather than moral outrage, he blurs the line between legitimate suspicion and moral clarity. His words reflect a troubling disposition: one that prefers cynicism to compassion, and analysis to truth.

Some Muslim groups have also joined him. They argue that Muslims too are being killed. They say both sides suffer. They call it a conflict between herders and farmers. They call it a communal clash. They speak of bandits. They speak of poverty. They call it anything but what it is.
That is obfuscation.
It is the deliberate twisting of truth. It is the denial of intent. It is an attempt to equate the aggressor with the victim. It is an attempt to drown genocide in the noise of false equivalence. Yes, Muslims are being killed. Yes, Muslim communities in the North have suffered from terror. But to say that Christians and Muslims are being killed equally is to lie to history. It is to erase evidence. It is to hide intent behind statistics.
Genocide is not a contest of body counts. It is not about how many die. It is about why they die. The Fulani militia that burn Christian villages in Benue or Plateau do not ask names. They ask religion. They do not attack to steal. They attack to cleanse. That is the truth. To pretend otherwise is to help the killers. To explain away their acts is to join their intent. Obfuscation serves evil. It distorts the moral compass of a people. It makes the truth look like politics. The danger of obfuscation is that it normalises horror. When every killing is called “reprisal”, genocide loses meaning. When every massacre is called a “clash”, the state escapes blame. When every burnt church is called a “dispute”, the victims vanish into abstraction.
This is how countries lose souls.
History is full of such losses. When the Nazis began killing Jews, many Germans called it “security”. When the Turks slaughtered Armenians, they called it “relocation”. When the Hutus hunted the Tutsis, they called it “war”. Obfuscation always precedes annihilation. In every genocide, there are three actors. The killers. The victims. And the deniers. The killers shed blood. The victims lose it. The deniers bury truth. Nigeria today has too many deniers. They sit in government. They speak on television. They say it is complicated. They ask for balance. They ask for restraint. But restraint is impossible where faith is hunted. Balance is immoral where one side is exterminated. The role of the state is to protect life. When the state chooses silence, it becomes complicit. When it blames the victims, it becomes a partner in crime. For years, governments in Nigeria have refused to call this genocide what it is. They prefer the language of neutrality. They speak of “unknown gunmen”. They pretend not to know the ideology behind the killings.
But the victims know. They know who arrives at villages at night. They know the chants before the fire starts. They know why their churches are burnt. They know it is not robbery. They know it is faith. Truth demands clarity. Clarity demands courage. To say this is genocide is to resist the lie. It is to restore meaning to suffering. It is to honour the dead by naming their death truthfully. Faith-based genocide is not new. The world has seen it before. The Crusades drenched Europe in the blood of religion. The Thirty Years’ War devastated the Holy Roman Empire. In each, men killed men to please their gods. But in our time, genocide hides behind politics. It hides behind poverty. It hides behind land disputes. When religion becomes the excuse for extermination, civilisation fails. When leaders pretend not to see it, humanity retreats. The Church in our country bleeds. So do many innocent Muslims who reject fanaticism. But to merge these sufferings into one confused story is to silence the distinct pain of those targeted for their faith. The Christian genocide is real. Its denial is immoral.
Every genocide begins with language. Words prepare the ground. Words decide who deserves to live. Words decide whose death can be excused. That is why obfuscation is dangerous. It rewrites the script of guilt. It absolves the killer before the crime ends. The language of obfuscation kills twice. First, it kills the truth. Then it kills memory. When truth dies, justice cannot be reborn. When memory dies, the dead die again. Our country must confront this truth. The killings of Christians are not random. They are systematic. They are ideological. They are genocidal. The perpetrators must be named. The state must act. The world must hold our country and its leaders accountable. History will not forgive silence. It never does. Rwanda and Bosnia learnt it. The world should not wait for our country to teach it again. Genocide is the failure of humanity to protect itself. Obfuscation is its language of self-deceit. We cannot stop one without rejecting the other. To call things by their true names is the beginning of justice. To blur their names is the beginning of evil.
Our country stands today at that line between truth and deceit. What it chooses to say will decide who lives tomorrow.