Article
Comment
Freedom of Belief
4 min read

We’re ignoring Nigeria's hellish underbelly

Why the West averts its gaze from anti-Christian violence there.

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

A burnt out motor cycle and car stand amid charred debris in a dusty compound.
Burned vehicles after Good Friday raid on April 7, 2023, in Ngban, Benue state, Nigeria.
Justice, Development, and Peace Commission.

Moments ago a Christian was killed in Nigeria—again. For the 100 million Christians living in Nigeria, news of brutal murders of their fellow worshippers has become commonplace. Every day 14 Christians in Nigeria die because of their faith. Nigeria is a land of extreme paradoxes known for many things. It’s one of the world’s leading oil producers. It’s home to the globally popular Afrobeats music scene. Its distinguished citizens include director-general of the World Trade Organisation Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, president of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Amina Mohammed, and former president of the International Criminal Court Chile Eboe-Osuji, just to name a few. Its global diaspora of 17 million consists of Nigerians working in positions of power in virtually every industry imaginable. From banking, finance, and tech to professional sports, higher education, healthcare, culinary arts, and consulting, there is not a single major industry in the world whose list of leaders does not include a Nigerian name.  

But just as every coin has two sides, so does Nigeria. Nigeria's story is incomplete without explaining its hellish underbelly. Well over 60 per cent of Nigeria's population, or at least 133 million of its citizens, live in a state of multidimensional poverty. The vast oil wealth generated by its oil industry only benefits a minuscule sliver of its elephantine population.  

Nigeria is the global leader in anti-Christian violence. Since 2009, over 52,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria by Islamist extremists. In the last 15 years, over 18,000 churches and 2,200 schools in Nigeria have been set on fire. Open Doors, a charity whose mission focuses on providing support to persecuted Christians globally, estimates that 90 per cent of murders targeting Christians across the world in 2022 took place in Nigeria. Islamist extremists killed at least 145 Nigerian Catholic priests in 2022 alone.    

Anti-Christian violence is evil just like antisemitic and Islamophobic violence are both evil.  

For people enjoying religious freedom in Europe and the United States, violence against Christians feels like a thing of the past. The concept of anti-Christian violence in the West triggers thoughts of Europe's religious wars in the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries, or The Troubles between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland in the 20th century.  

However, the scale of anti-Christian violence in Nigeria puts it in a league of its own. In the West we take for granted the freedom of religion because we have had it for so long. It is human nature to take for granted the aspects of life we have grown most accustomed to. Ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has reignited in Western public debate the pervasive, threatening existence of antisemitism and Islamophobia in Western societies.  

But why has the consistent, monstrously murderous Christophobia in Nigeria that has unfolded in the last two decades not cemented its place within Western public discourse? Do Christians in the West only demand action when White Christians get murdered? Are 52,000 brutal, gory killings of Black Christian bodies in Sub-Saharan Africa not sufficient reason for the powers that be in global Christian society to mobilise their vast political, military, and economic resources to intervene, protect, and bring peace?  

Christians running for their lives in Nigeria are as much part of the bride of Christ as Southern Baptists sipping sweet tea in Alabama on a Sunday afternoon. 

Violence against Christians is not a thing of the past. It is as real a phenomenon today as it has ever been. Few states in the Majority World have developed for themselves a reputation for institutional ineptitude and malfeasance more so than Nigeria. Solutions for ending Nigeria's anti-Christian violence will not come from the Nigerian state. Instead, they must come from the religious sector, civil society, foreign governments, and private actors. Anti-Christian violence in Nigeria is not motivated solely by extremist Islamist zealotry, albeit the influence of this element certainly plays a part. Poverty, competition for scarce resources, and relative deprivation along with educational underdevelopment and political profiteering on the heel of Christophobia are collectively responsible for these violent acts.  

In Christian theology, Jesus Christ has a bride; this bride is the church, or all who believe in Christ and follow his teachings. Christians running for their lives in Nigeria are as much part of the bride of Christ as Southern Baptists sipping sweet tea in Alabama on a Sunday afternoon, Anglicans enjoying a Sunday roast, or Pentecostals in São Paolo playing football on the beach after a midweek worship service. The killing of one Christian in Nigeria is an assault on the 2.4 billion Christians living across the world. Christ has only one bride, and He lovingly cares for each member of His bride equally, overwhelmingly, and powerfully.  

Anti-Christian violence is evil just like anti-semitic and Islamophobic violence are both evil. Western media’s reluctance to report about these murders and offer platforms to activists, clerics, and stakeholders whose voices can help galvanise support for ending this violence cannot be separated from irreducibly influential Western religious gazes that dehumanise and deprioritise the lives, experiences, and sufferings of non-White Christians globally. Until anti-Christian violence in Nigeria comes to an end, the collective dignity of Christians worldwide will remain tainted by a scourge those with power are too apathetic to eradicate. 

Column
Comment
Conspiracy theory
Football
Sport
5 min read

Football in the age of conspiracy theory

More politics in football is driving distrust and mis-information
A football support protest banner depicts The Muppet Show logo, a meeting of men in suits and various slogans.
A Manchester City supporters' protest banner.
r/MCFC.

In 2008, Manchester United sign footballers Fábio da Silva and Raphael da Silva. They are twin brothers. Confusion follows. In 2009, referee Chris Foy seems to show a yellow card to Fábio for a foul committed by Rafael in a game against Barnsley. I’m still not sure who actually makes the tackle.  

Then-manager of the club Sir Alex Ferguson admitted he often confused the two players. When Rafael was suspended for a game, Ferguson joked about playing him anyway, and just saying it was Fábio. “They wouldn’t know. Their DNA is probably the same,” he said. 

Perhaps that’s how the rumour started.  

Football is a game of small margins; minor gains can make for huge advantages. Few managers have understood this as well as Ferguson, a man who would do anything to make the most of marginal gains. Up to and including ‘bending’ the rules a little, if needs be. (Allegedly; if the lawyers are reading).  

It’s perhaps not unsurprising, then, that there is an old conspiracy theory that Ferguson would swap the brothers at half-time to get an extra substitution. “They wouldn’t know. Their DNA is probably the same.” It’s the kind of thing Ferguson would do.  

Allegedly. 

Conspiracies have a long history: the earth is flat; Paul McCartney died in 1966; pigeons are actually government CCTV cameras.  

I love weird footballing conspiracy theories. They’re ultimately harmless, and so implausible that they make me chuckle. But recently, it feels as though there’s been a sharp upturn in the amount of conspiratorial thinking surrounding football’s public discourse.  

Everything is a conspiracy now; all 20 premier league clubs seem to be the alleged victims of some conspiracy or other to stop them from winning the title. At least one of them is proved wrong each year.  

Every red card, disallowed goal, throw-in, and foul is now viewed as yet another part of the establishment’s ongoing plan to sabotage your club. Why they’d want to sabotage your club in particular is never made manifestly clear. That’s besides the point. The plan is obvious enough if you look for it; never mind the motivation. 

Football doesn’t help itself at times. For example, the decision to allow Manchester-based referees to referee Manchester-based football teams is simply baffling (and, as is often overlooked, simply unfair on the referees who then have their integrity called into question).  

It’s now public knowledge that Michael Oliver earned considerable money refereeing private games in the United Arab Emirates. And so, when he failed to send off Manchester City’s Mateo Kovačić for two seemingly nailed-on second yellows in a game against Arsenal on 8th October 2023, you can forgive people for joining the dots and making the connection to City’s UAE owners. 

Even when there’s no grand conspiracy, giving people a reasonable excuse to crack out the tin foil is just dumb. 

Of course, none of this is unique to football. Conspiracies have a long history: the earth is flat; Paul McCartney died in 1966; pigeons are actually government CCTV cameras. All the hits. Again, a lot of them are just comically harmless.  

The ship has sailed, and as long as football remains a political plaything, the same distrust in our political authorities will lead to distrust in our footballing authorities. 

But many aren’t, and these more malignant conspiracy theories seem to be becoming more prevalent and more dangerous. America saw an unprecedented attack on its democratic processes and institutions on January 6 2021; at the hands of its still-technically-then-President, no less. Allegedly. Elsewhere, numerous people declined the Covid-19 vaccination because of misinformation about its effects, a worrying repeat of the vaccines-cause-autism nonsense of the 1990s.  

In the aftermath of the horrific murder of three young girls in Southport on 30th July 2024, numerous people wrongly identified a Muslim immigrant as the alleged attacker. This led to widespread riots across the UK involving attacks on mosques and asylum seeker accommodation. As I write this from my home in Liverpool, a community library down the road is still waiting to be reopened after it was burned down amidst claims it was giving Qur’ans to children. It was not.  

Nigel Farage still refuses to apologise for claiming ‘the truth’ was being withheld from the public. 

But the thing is some conspiracies turn out to be true. There was a conspiracy involving the state and South Yorkshire Police to blame fans at the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 for the death of (now) 97 people at the match; that is now undeniable. And the times when conspiracy theories turn out to be accurate only serve to enflame and empower the others. 

Conspiracy theories kill people. And so, it seems distasteful to draw any sort of line from using twins to mask extra substitutions to terrorist rioting in the aftermath of three young girls being stabbed to death. But, these are two extremes of the same kind of behaviour made possible for the same reason: declining trust in established authorities.  

This is not to say we need to ‘keep politics out of football’. That’s not possible, even if we wanted to. It will always seem disingenuous to me that the same people who were against football players taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter also seem very happy to sing the English national anthem at the FA Cup final. You can’t have politics when its suits you; when it’s comfortable for you. 

No; football is a political entity now, whether you like it or not. MPs performatively support the England national team during major tournaments to win votes; The UK government is seeking to introduce an independent football regulator; Prince William is president of the FA; Nation-states own football clubs. Allegedly. 

The ship has sailed, and as long as football remains a political plaything, the same distrust in our political authorities will lead to distrust in our footballing authorities.  

But the inverse is true now, too. Football’s pervasive presence in society offers an opportunity for football fans to be the best of us; to model a culture wherein institutional authorities are trusted and – more importantly – deserve to be trusted.  

If I’m being honest, whether I’m watching it on the telly or in the ground, I am often at my least Christ-like when the football’s on. There I am: accusing the referee of all sorts, calling the linesman any manner of unspeakable things because he gave a throw-in to the opposition, even if it’s the right decision. There I am: contributing to the very culture of distrust that characterises so much of public life nowadays.  

I have, I think, a genuinely ethical responsibility to stop behaving like that when watching the football. It won’t stop idiots from rioting, and it won't stop Donald Trump and Nigel Farage from lying. Allegedly. But it might just help contribute to a culture wherein those acts are increasingly harder to commit. A culture where trust and hope become genuine options again.