We’re ignoring Nigeria's hellish underbelly

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

Chris Wadibia

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.

Article

Character

Comment

Freedom

Politics

6 January 2025

4 min read

Elon will learn that speech is never free

We see the cost of our words in our daily lives.

Cameron Wiltshire-Plant

Cameron is training to be a vicar in the city of Leicester.

Elon Musk, wearing a t-shirt slouches forward, holding a mic, while sitting on a stage chair.

Musk, not talking.

Wcamp9, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nigel Farage presumably still believes Elon Musk a ‘hero’ for reintroducing absolutely free speech on X- despite the Billionaire concurrently suggesting that Farage isn’t cut out to lead the UK’s Reform party. If he is truly committed to the free speech cause, Nigel should welcome this verbal attack from Musk as proof that he can take what he often gives out.

This turn of events demonstrates free speech to be a misnomer. Whatever we say - and do - is never free, and always has a price to pay. Farage and Reform ended up paying the embarrassing cost of Musk’s pointed comments this time round, bemused by the volte-face from the man who was in talks to donate to Reform just weeks ago.

We see the cost of our words in our daily lives. Saying ‘sorry’ costs us our pride, saying ‘thank you’ costs us our independence, saying ‘I forgive you’ costs us our chance at revenge, giving a compliment costs us a battle with our own insecurities, and so on. And these are positive words- the verbal price is plainer to see when we have caused hurt, upset, or distress. I am grieved often by a thoughtless or hurtful comment given or received.

The impact of Musk’s words on Farage is clear to see, but there is also an impact on Musk’s inner life. This is the hidden cost of negative speech; the speaker poisons themselves with the negativity they are channelling in what they say. A Hebrew proverb states that ‘death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.’ Continuous negative speech will twist a person entirely in on themselves, slowly reducing any capacity to love or bear goodness. Eventually the tongue dictates the whole person; what victimising speech comes out is the sum total of the defiled heart that propels it. There is little ability to pull back- what was once a conscious choice to engage in vitriol has become the unconscious reflex of a vitriolic heart.

Advocates of uncensored speech are usually trying to say something society does not generally accept, and therefore often something extremist. Recognising there is great cost to hurtful speech both to the speaker and the target might encourage those tempted to vent their deepest fears in the form of insult to consider again the power of the tongue.

Questioning Farage’s politics may not be an extremist thought, but we must pay attention to the fact that the ‘hero’ of free speech, Musk, appears to have fallen out with Farage because of their differing opinions on Tommy Robinson, the extremist whom Musk has continued to platform and refused to censor. Farage has distanced himself from Robinson and seemingly incurred Musk’s wrath. Furthermore, Musk’s vile comments over the weekend about Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips demonstrates that repeated insults curate a dark heart.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that Musk seems to be on a concurrent campaign to disrupt democracy as he tries to advocate a total absence of censorship. The role of democracy is to protect minorities; the reason we trust elected officials to vote laws in for us is to protect those unlike us from mob rule. In our society, our elected officials should be protecting the migrants, refugees, ethnic minorities, criminals, the disabled, those unable to work, and any others who are ripe for victimisation by wider society.

These protections, the rule of law, and the court system, means we can live together without our basest human instincts for violence ruling our better judgements. Ours is a society built on biblical principles, and the care for the foreigner and the poor is found continuously from cover to cover of that book. Not only does democracy offer a system of government that offers the protection of the law, but it also incorporates universally just principles with regards protecting minorities.

This is the reason that free speech is curbed to an extent in Britain by the ability to prosecute hate speech. Our elected officials have decided that the cost of some speech is too high to pay. This is not a totalitarian imposition, but a recognition that in an internet age, hateful opinions spread too quickly and too visibly to be tolerated.

In order to attempt to curate a society of gentler and healthier hearts, we should turn to the teacher whose words operated exclusively in grace and truth. Jesus recognised that speech was not free, saying on one occasion that each person would have to account for their careless words before God on the day of judgement. Deeper than even the consequences for our own selves and the recipients in the immediate moment, this eternal cost should remind us of the responsibility to use our words wisely and to deal in truth, encouragement, and wise critique.

All our words have tariffs - Jesus’ earthly life was full of negative reactions to his speaking the truth. And yet, for ourselves, for our societies, and for those who need protection from hatred: we must think twice before we speak. For our words cost more than we will know in this life.

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