Prof. Usman Yusuf
I have seen, lived and benefited from a Nigeria led by patriotic and selfless leaders that cared deeply for the country and its citizens; they managed the country’s diversity and resources with the fear of God.
A few days ago, my friend and I were reminiscing about our good old days in Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria from 1976 to 1982. We remembered coming from all four corners of this beautiful land, from the edges of the Sahara in the north to the creeks of the Niger Delta in the south.
Ours was a beautiful mosaic of humanity. Our parents sent us to ABU Zaria to mix with and learn from each other, an experience that has enriched our lives immeasurably.
Fast forward to today’s Nigeria, where there is mayhem and mistrust all across the land. Today, we are told we are enemies because we look, dress, eat, talk, and worship differently. But we that have lived through a better Nigeria know differently, for we are a true testament to a very long history of tolerance among people in this land.
That is why I am deeply pained and saddened by all the toxicity created by the conspiracy of genocide of Christians in northern Nigeria.
Now is the time to dispense with all political correctness in order to set the record straight for posterity. We, Nigerian Muslims cannot be blackmailed, intimidated, demonized, defined by or put on the defensive by the insensitive and irresponsible false narrative of genocide of Christians in Nigeria that is propagated by enemies of Islam, Muslims and our dear country, Nigeria.
The goal of these bigoted, ungodly and unpatriotic merchants of falsehoods who are doing the bidding of their Islamophobic foreign masters is to break up Nigeria by instigating a religious war between Muslims and Christians in northern Nigeria.
Since English is not my first language, I looked up the universal definition of genocide by the United Nations. The definition reinforces my belief that there is a lot more to these clumsy lies than meets the eye. It is a word that is recklessly and mischievously used to smear Nigerian Muslims for ulterior motives.
Genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national, ethnic, racial, or religious group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
The five acts defined as genocide are killing members, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The systematic campaign of calumny against Islam and northern Nigerian Muslims in particular is not new.
I witnessed it first hand at an international forum where I first heard and saw the extent of these lies and hatred when I represented His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, at the 2nd Annual International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit in Washington, DC, on June 28-30, 2022.
I was shocked to hear supposed men of Christian faith from Nigeria lying and demonising Islam, Muslims, Fulanis and Kanuris before a gathering of 1,200 participants from all over the world.
I shared my experience at the summit in an article published in the 4 July 2022 edition of the Daily Trust Newspaper titled: Message From Washington DC.
Christians in the north will do well to resist the temptation of getting sucked into this “genocide” dummy sold to them by mischievous, hateful interlopers with a secessionist agenda whose kinsmen have for generations been living and benefiting from the generosity and hospitality of Muslims in the region.
To do anything differently will amount to playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette.
To dwell on discussing these falsehoods is to dignify them and distract Nigerians from the real issue, which is the abysmal failures of the government, whose primary responsibility it is to protect all citizens.
Muslims in the north have been and continue to be the biggest victims of terrorists and terrorism in Nigeria. Still, they are being blamed, demonized and profiled for the government’s failure to protect all.
We, Muslims in the north, are burying our dead every day all across the region in prayerful and dignified silence.
We do not use the names or images of our loved ones killed in violent attacks for propaganda or to attract donations from international donors, nor do we publicise the names of victims or their sufferings in the media for global attention or sympathy.
History is full of recorded incidents of genocidal attacks and mass killings of Muslims all across Nigeria. Dr Aliyu U. Tilde recently chronicled these massacres over a period of 36 years (1981-2017) in a paper published on 20 November 2025 titled “Genocide Nomenclature in Nigeria.”
In the paper, he highlighted the bias in reporting such incidents by Nigeria’s Christian-dominated media that paints a false portrait of Christians being wiped out everywhere; Muslims are never victims; Christians never kill; and Muslims kill for religion but Christians for “land” and “in clashes.”
He showed that when the victims are Christian, the media identifies them as Christians, even if the conflict has nothing to do with religion, with screaming headlines that read: “Fulani kill Christians, Christian communities attacked, genocide of Christians”.
But when the victims are Muslim, their religious identity is deliberately omitted. They are instead referred to by neutral names such as villagers, civilians, locals, people, or Nigerians.
A recent example of such reporting bias is the 25 Kebbi state school girls abducted by bandits from their dormitories on 17 November 2025; they were referred to in media reports simply as “school children”, not “Muslim school children”.
Dr Tilde went on to illustrate that if the attackers are Muslim, they are eagerly reported as Islamists, jihadists, Fulani Muslim terrorists.
But if the perpetrators are Christian, they are reported as unknown gunmen, youths, tribal militias, attackers or mob. Their Christian identity is deliberately hidden.
Lest we forget, on 3 December 2023, at least 88 Muslim worshippers, including women and children, were killed while celebrating the holy day of Maulud by a drone strike carried out by the Nigerian Army in Tudun Biri village, Kaduna State.
The Military admitted the killing was an avoidable mistake, but no one has been held to account for this tragedy. Yet, Nigerian Muslims did not go into the world screaming genocide.
Also, on 18 December 2022, a strike by the Nigerian Air Force killed 64 innocent Muslim civilians in Mutumji village in Zamfara state.
Yet, Nigerian Muslims did not go into the world screaming genocide.
Again, on 24 January 2023, a military air strike killed more than 40 Muslim herders in the Doma region of Nasarawa state. Yet, Nigerian Muslims did not go into the world screaming genocide.
24 January 2017 was the deadliest mistaken air strike when the Nigerian Air Force struck an IDP camp in Rann village in north-east Nigeria, resulting in the death of 115 innocent civilians. Yet, Nigerian Muslims did not go into the world screaming genocide.
Between 2017 and December 2024, no fewer than 528 civilians, overwhelmingly Muslims, have been killed in accidental airstrikes by the Nigerian military in northern Nigeria. Yet, Nigerian Muslims did not go into the world screaming genocide.
The Nigerian military has consistently failed to independently and thoroughly investigate any of these incidents.
The Nigerian authorities have persistently failed to hold the military to account for any of these tragic air strikes that have cost the lives of many innocent civilians. Yet, Nigerian Muslims did not go into the world screaming genocide.
Nigerians and indeed, the rest of the world, particularly the United States Government, need to know that Nigerian security services have been engaging the services of a Christian Militia from the Niger Delta to fight in Muslim northern region on the pretext of fighting terrorists.
These Christian mercenaries are suspected to be largely responsible for the gruesome massacres of Muslim worshipers in mosques in the northwest that are blamed on bandits.
The use of Christian militia from the Niger Delta in the north by Nigeria’s security services was made public by their boastful leader at no less a place than at a press briefing in the Presidential Villa after meeting with President Tinubu early in his presidency. Residents of villages in Shinkafi LGA, Zamfara state, have recently confirmed the presence of these Christian mercenaries in their communities.
I would like Nigerians to imagine the uproar and protests that would have come from Christian organizations, southern media outlets and southern ethnic pressure groups if Nigeria’s security services had used repentant bandits, ISWAP or Boko Haram to fight Christian IPOB-ESN terrorists in the southeast during the tenure of Late President Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim.
At a time when Nigerian Muslims are being demonised and maligned all over the world by Nigerian Christian organisations and Churches as genocidally killing Christians, it is totally unacceptable that Nigeria’s security services are engaging a Christian Militia from the Niger Delta to fight and kill Muslims in the north.
I call on all Muslims, traditional rulers, Muslim Clerics and organisations, northern governors and members of the National Assembly to demand for the immediate withdrawal of these Christian Militia from all the northern states they are deployed to and for the federal government to institute a thorough investigation of who authorised their engagement and all their activities in the region.
Following some of the worst spates of mass abductions of students from schools across northern Nigeria, the
The federal and state governments have announced the immediate closure of all boarding schools across the region.
These panic measures are not only retrogressive and defeatist, but they also play into the hands of these terrorists. It has never happened in the 65-year history of Nigeria that schools in a whole region are closed on account of a terrorist threat.
The optics is that of governments on the run rather than standing firm and addressing the serious security threats facing the region and the nation.
President Trump’s threat of coming to Nigeria to rescue his “cherished Christians” from persecution, “guns blazing in a short and swift operation”, is nothing but him pandering to his Christian Evangelical constituency.
The other reason for his threats is economic and geopolitical. Nigeria is becoming a potential theatre of proxy war between America and China over the much-coveted rare-earth mineral deposits, which Northern Nigeria is endowed with.
There is a striking similarity between the bogus claim of Christian genocide in northern Nigeria and Trump’s claim of genocide of whites in South Africa, where high crime rates affect predominantly blacks, but the American propaganda machine twists it into a narrative of white genocide while resisting the same label for Israel’s 2-year military actions in Palestine.
Terrorism has been a national tragedy in Nigeria for the past 16 years, in the case of Boko Haram, 12 years for banditry and 8 years for Lakurawa terrorists.
To rewrite this tragic history and frame it as Christian genocide is not only mischievous and insensitive but ungodly because it deliberately ignores and minimises the continuing sufferings of the Muslim majority that account for the largest casualties.
The immediate result of Trump’s military threat has been a remarkable spike in terrorist attacks in schools and churches all across the north as if these terrorists are daring him to strike.
The other more troubling effect is that it has widened the mistrust between Muslims and Christians in the region.
The Muslim North is eerily silent in a way reminiscent of the aftermath of the 1966 coup. People are angry and saying that Nigerian Christians went to America and lied to Trump about Muslims killing them, and he is coming to attack them. They are saying that they are not going to just sit and wait to be attacked.
We, concerned citizens on our part, have been doing a lot of outreach to traditional rulers, elders, clerics, our Christian compatriots and the media explaining and calming people down all across the region.
I shudder to think of what will happen if an American military misadventure in northern Nigeria results in the death of a single Muslim. Any such misguided military strike anywhere in the region by the American military will blow off the lid of a simmering volcano.
A pattern is emerging all across the north of a sophisticated plan by the bandits, ISWAP, Boko Haram and Lakurawa terrorists to set the region on fire and make it ungovernable and impossible for any credible election to hold in 2026 – 2027 as is being scheduled.
The intensity, variety, spread and audacity of these attacks are frightening and instilling real terror in our people.
It is worrisome that, at terrifying times like these, when citizens look to their leaders for reassurance and words of comfort, the leaders themselves seem to be hiding in their bunkers, with no solutions to the tragedy engulfing the country.
I respectfully call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to please step up and show some leadership by addressing the nation and calm the nerves of citizens that all will be well. Now is no time for politicking or issuing sterile press statements by media handlers.
May God Almighty Heal Our Wounds And Bring Peace To Our Land.
Yusuf is a Professor of Haematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation.
