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Freedom of Belief

Migration

11 November 2024

7 min read

From Nigeria’s killing fields to Europe’s shores, the data behind the domino effect

While Nigeria thrives, some left-behind are desperate to escape.

Chris Wadibia

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development.

A data map shows circles of varying size across a map of Nigeria

Fatal attacks map.

ORFA.

Just as every coin has two sides, every soul contains the equal capacity for good and evil. Just like affairs of the soul, migration has the ability to strengthen or weaken societies.

Nigeria, the Giant of Africa, has one of the world’s largest and most professionally distinguished diasporas. Over 17 million Nigerians live in other countries. The most famous members of the Nigerian diaspora, figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Anthony Joshua, John Boyega, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Wally Adeyemo, have achieved stardom thanks to talents that impact or entertain millions of people globally.

However, these famous figures merely represent the glorious one percent of the Nigerian diaspora. Their success can easily distract observers from the grim reality of why so many Nigerians desperately seek to leave a country known for producing world changers.

Seeking data on violence

In October 2019, researchers at the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa started a project exploring the nature and impacts of of religious violence in Nigeria. The project spanned four years and generated many significant findings. Terror groups in Nigeria killed 31,000 civilians in 7,000 attacks in just four years, the Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) accounting for 39 per cent of these killings (a figure dwarfing the killings perpetrated by ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates), So called “land-based community attacks,” a concept referring to instances when actors like FEM invade small Christian farming settlements to kill, rape, and abduct Christians and burn their homes, accounted for 82 per cent of civilian killings in the study, Christian death tolls far exceeding Muslim death tolls (2.7 Christians killed for every 1 Muslim killed) in the reporting period, and 6.5 times as many Christian murders compared to Muslim murders relative to average state populations.

The methodology of the study set out to find data on all the people, regardless of their religion, negatively affected by terrorist violence. However, with every new batch of data collected, disturbing patterns emerged. Since the 2009 birth of the infamous Boko Haram insurgency, global media coverage of the terrorist violence has consistently argued Muslims rather than Christians disproportionately bear the brunt of this Islamist extremist violence. The findings of the study suggest otherwise.

ORFA data map of fatal attacks across Nigeria.

Source: ORFA.

Shouldn’t the government do something?

Historically, Nigerian governments have been reticent, even reluctant, to condemn violence in the north associated with the Fulani ethnic group. Former presidents like Muhammadu Buhari, a member of the Fulani, have even gone as far as to dismiss the issue of Fulani ethnic violence as just “cattle rustling.” However, in Nigeria, mere “cattle rustling” to some is a seriously grave situation for others.

Findings by the Observatory researchers suggest Nigerian security operatives, most of whom belong to the Fulani and Hausa ethnic groups, have a suspiciously selective way of engaging with terrorist violence in northern Nigeria, often leaving Christians distinctively vulnerable. Roman Catholics in Nigeria have even accused Nigeria's military of being a jihadist force. Churches in northern Nigeria live in a constant state of terror and acutely distressing fear.

In Nigeria, the federal government alone, led by the president, has the final say on matters concerning security and the army. Incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has notably appointed far more Christians to senior government offices than his predecessor, Buhari. The Nigerian government is famously opaque. Despite its nominally democratic visage, family dynasties and networks continue to dominate political life and business affairs.

Understanding the religious geography and reaction

Religion in Nigeria is divided along geographical lines. The northern half is dominated by conservative Islam. Catholicism and Anglicanism reign supreme in the southeast. The southwest functions as a geographical melting pot of Islam (albeit a more secular variety compared to the north) and Christianity (especially Pentecostalism). The north contains a surprisingly large number of Pentecostals. Many Pentecostal pastors and choirs in the north have been kidnapped by the mercilessly violent Islamist extremists.

The overwhelming majority of Christians in Nigeria live in the southern half of the country. However, in a Nigeria which has suffered from one oppressive government after another for decades (most of these led by conservative Islamic military and civilian presidents), most Christians struggle to survive and lack the energy to speak up for their northern kin. Despite their weariness, the Southern Nigerian Church (the collective population of Christians living in the south) has a sacred responsibility to awaken and demand greater protections from the federal government and the military for Christians living in the north.

Local causes, global effect

Over the last two decades, commentators have routinely pointed to climate change as the primary factor facilitating violent encounters between Muslims and Christians. Fulani cattle herders, guided by the desire for better grazing lands for their livestock, have often encroached on land owned by Christian farmers in the north and middle regions. The findings by researchers at the Observatory suggest significantly more is going on to facilitate these violent clashes than just climate change. Ascribing the challenge of religious violence in Nigeria to just climate change provides a get-out-of-jail free card to the men of violence linked to the orchestrated killings of Christians.

Ethno-religious violence has quietly become commonplace in northern Nigerian life. The single solution capable of curbing this violence is unprecedented, cross-party, interethnic, and interreligious security reform. Strength of security affects every person in Nigeria. From the richest to the poorest, no one is immune from a sudden kidnapping, suicide bomb, or violent act of banditry negatively changing their life forever.

Nigeria's neighbours in Europe cannot afford to continue slumbering and must wake up. Readers in Europe feeling insulated from the violence the data records are just as susceptible to the shockwaves that a collapse of the Nigerian state as other West African neighbours. Such an event would imperil the security of citizens in countries like Italy, Spain, and Greece just as much as it would people living in Mali, Chad, and Cameroon.

Nigeria has never been nearer to a civil war or state collapse since the Biafra War of the late 1960s. Ethno-religious violence disproportionately targeting northern Christians is one of the greatest and most overlooked factors contributing to Nigeria's dysfunctionality. In an unprecedentedly connected world, such a collapse would, in turn, trigger further collapses. The European Union (EU) does not grasp the severity of how such a collapse would affect its own security and stability. At a time when every day brings news of small boats carrying migrants to European shores, Nigeria's collapse would trigger one of the greatest avalanches of mass migration in modern African history.

A modern Middle Passage

Nigeria has a population of over 235 million, the largest in Africa and sixth largest globally. If just 10 per cent of the population attempted to flee in the event of another civil war or a destabilising political event, that is 23 million Nigerians desperately fleeing into any country they reason might welcome them. Many of these millions would gamble by voyaging on the tempestuous Atlantic Ocean in small boats with the goal of beginning new lives in European countries. Some would inevitably perish in what might evolve into this century's Middle Passage. Nigeria’s collapse would destroy the EU by overwhelming its borders and social services. The average population of an EU country is just under 17 million, or the size of Nigeria's diaspora. The unprecedented connectedness of our world means catastrophic destabilisation in one country can have significant consequences for the stability of other countries globally. The EU has a geopolitical responsibility to invest in improving Nigeria's security situation. Abductions, killings, and displacements in Nigeria might trigger instability in Europe and beyond.

However, the collapse of Nigeria would not only destabilise the EU. ISIS affiliates like ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) have a strategic interest in Nigeria's collapse, because it would open the door for them to expand their control throughout West Africa.

A team of researchers guided by the goal of better understanding terrorist violence in Nigeria simply followed the breadcrumbs of organically emergent data to show why the broader world should take seriously violence against Christians in the Giant of Africa. Living in an unprecedentedly connected world comes with new privileges and new responsibilities. To simply indulge in these new privileges without standing strong and shouldering these new responsibilities would be foolish, selfish, and nearsighted.

English poet John Donne once famously wrote,

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,  of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
Every man is a piece.

The “old self” understanding of global connectedness, ruled by selfishness and ignorance, must give way to the “new self” model of prosperity and security via proactive collaboration. For every one Okonjo-Iweala, Boyega, or Antetokounmpo, millions of Nigerians suffering from the effects of a rapidly destabilising state dream of emigrating abroad. Global Christianity and global security stakeholders each have an interest in a stable Nigeria. A stable Nigeria functions as a wellspring of human capital for the benefit of the entire world.

Donne, in the same poem, wrote,

Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

The world is involved in Nigeria and Nigeria is involved in the world. The death of Nigeria would pave the way for the death of the EU. The bell tolls for the EU community to awaken from decades of neglectfully overlooking its interests in a stable and secure Nigeria.

Further resources

ORFA report summary.
ORFA full report.
'No Road Home', a data study on those living in displaced persons camps. Download the study (PDF).

Article

Comment

Film & TV

Politics

Truth and Trust

13 November 2025

6 min read

The BBC and the Church of England: two giants, one crisis of trust

Will honourable resignations save the BBC—or anyone?

Tim Wyatt

Tim Wyatt is a journalist, and editor of The Critical Friend Substack.

TIm Davie, sits in an interview in front of screens showing facts about the BBC

Tim Davie, former BBC boss.

BBC.

Sometimes it seems like the BBC is never out of its own headlines. Just as one crisis is finally overcome, another erupts. This year alone we’ve seen outcry over a documentary on Gaza and the Glastonbury fiasco. Now, the broadcaster’s director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness have resigned over the latest scandal. A leaked internal dossier concluded a Panorama documentary on Donald Trump had misleadingly edited a speech he made on 6 January (it also raised questions over the BBC’s LGBT coverage and its Arabic language service).

Both Davie and Turness have insisted that the corporation is not biased in its coverage, even if mistakes had been made by its journalists and editors. But both found the pressure too much to bear. Speaking outside the BBC’s London HQ, Turness said:

“I stepped down over the weekend because the buck stops with me. But I'd like to make one thing very clear, BBC News is not institutionally biased. That's why it's the world's most trusted news provider."

She was right to identify trust as key. Can we trust the BBC to tell us what is going on in the world fairly and accurately, if it makes mistakes like these? Can we trust the individuals within the broadcaster to report the news impartially, regardless of their personal views? Indeed, can we trust those currently condemning the BBC to be acting in good faith, and not motivated by political hostility or commercial rivalry?

According to research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the BBC is the most trusted news brand in Britain, with 60 per cent of people saying they have faith in its output. Some of its newspaper antagonists can muster barely a third of that trust score. An Ofcom survey from 2019 found an impressive 83 per cent of viewers of the BBC’s TV news output trusted it to be accurate.

But trust in the media overall is slipping away in Britain. A decade ago, 51 per cent of people told the Reuters Institute they trusted the news in general; a Brexit referendum, Covid pandemic and ten years of political turmoil later, that figure is just 35 per cent.

Trust in the BBC is one of its most precious commodities, part of what helps it stand out both in Britain and globally. This is why Davie and Turness decided to fall on their swords, despite nobody suggesting they had personally done much wrong. It has to preserve the trust of its audience at all costs and the price to pay has historically been that when someone messes up, the people at the top resign. We saw the same back in 2012 when the then director general George Entwhistle quit after just 54 days in the role after the BBC got sucked into the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal. In 2004, both the director general and chair of the BBC’s board had to resign in the wake of the suicide of Iraq War whistleblower David Kelly.

This – the regular spectacle of the ‘honourable’ resignation – is an increasing rarity in other parts of public life. In our post-truth post-shame political environment, it is more common for politicians to brazen out scandal and disgrace, and rarer for their party institutions to insist leaders fall on their swords. We lost count of how many scandals Boris Johnson survived as prime minister before he was finally felled by Partygate in 2022. Across the pond, Donald Trump has effectively rendered himself uncancellable by capturing the Republican Party and much of the US media ecosystem, despite corruption and growing authoritarianism. As the Guardian columnist Marina Hyde put it, “The BBC is the last place anyone still resigns from.”

And yet. There is an interesting counter-example from another storied British public institution battling to maintain relevance in the 21st century and wracked by scandal and division: the Church of England. Just a year ago it too suffered the ignominy of seeing its leader resign in disgrace. Justin Welby was forced to quit as Archbishop of Canterbury after he was criticised in an official review over John Smyth, one of the most prolific abusers in the church’s history.

Welby painted his resignation in similar terms: an honourable act of falling on his sword to take responsibility for the institution’s broader failings. In his cloth-eared valedictory speech in the House of Lords, the outgoing Archbishop told his fellow peers that “there comes a time, if you are technically leading a particular institution, when the shame of what has gone wrong, whether one is personally responsible or not, must require a head to roll.” And in this particular case, there was only “one head that rolls well enough”, Welby added; his own.

But did this supposedly principled act of resignation rebuild trust? Not really. In fact, it may have done the opposite and further damaged the public’s trust in its national church. Welby initially hesitated and refused to resign after the damning Smyth report was first published, only agreeing to go after a weekend of simmering outrage. The vibe was less 'honourable man falling on his sword' and more 'leader convinced they’d done little wrong reluctantly forced out against their will'.

And yet with the passing of time, his resignation has become mired in regret. Growing numbers of both bishops and others in the church have questioned just how liable he really was for the failure to stop Smyth’s abuse, and how robust the Makin report’s conclusions are. There is an increasing sense Welby was forced out in a rush to find a scapegoat, any scapegoat, to stem the bleeding and show that the church was taking it seriously.

His successful defenestration has radicalised the more hardline elements of the abuse survivor movement, encouraging them to try to topple their other despised enemies within the church hierarchy. Bishops now fear they will be next on the chopping block, regardless of their culpability; unsurprisingly this does not engender greater trust. In fact, many observers would suggest trust between the bishops and those in the pulpits and pews has never been lower in modern times. The tortured attempt to introduce blessings for gay couples has poisoned the well further, contributing to the system for appointing new bishops to begin to break down. Somehow, both the liberal and the conservative wings of the Church feel equally betrayed by the bishops’ actions during the gay blessings saga.

Trust is slowly earned, and quick to drain away. Even doing the honourable thing and resigning is no longer a surefire route to restore trust in our public institutions. Just as with Welby, it is likely these BBC resignations will not rebuild confidence in our national broadcaster. Instead, they may well further encourage the right-wing press and demagogues like Trump to scream “fake news” and hector impartial news outlets further. The resignations also tell the ordinary viewer and listener the accusations of bias must be true – otherwise why would these bigwigs have to stand down?

There are no easy lessons to read across from the Church of England’s battle to regain trust to the BBC. For years now bishops have been urging clergy and lay people to try to trust them once more, to put aside defensiveness and hostility and work together in vulnerable collaboration. And things have mostly only got worse. Trust cannot be willed back into existence, nor will it return through the bloodletting of high-profile ‘honourable’ resignations.

In fact, there’s a deeper problem which goes much further than the BBC or the Church of England. A deeper crisis of trust in society at large. For 25 years the Edelman Trust Barometer has been measuring societies around the world, and of 28 nations polled last year the UK’s average trust score was rock bottom: just 39 per cent of people on average said they trusted businesses, the government, or the media. In fact, almost everywhere people are running low on trust. Fears that government leaders and media elites purposely lie to us are at an all-time high. Until we can find ways to rebuild the ties that bind us, as individuals and communities, it is hard to see how the large institutions that used to shape British civic life – whether that is the BBC, the Church or parliament – can regain the public’s trust, resignations or no resignations.

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