Missionaries claim genocide in Nigeria: ‘Death by a thousand attacks’
Caroline MolloyTwo American missionaries are raising alarm over what they describe as a systematic, government-enabled genocide of Christians in Nigeria.
Judd Saul of Iowa and Mike Arnold of Texas — both filmmakers turned human rights advocates — are working to provide housing and support for displaced Christian families while urging the international community to confront what they call a deliberate campaign of religious persecution, according to an Oct. 20 report from Truth Nigeria.
“The primary driving force of the killing of Christians in Nigeria is the Fulani tribe,” Saul, the founder of Equipping the Persecuted, said during an interview on the Tim Pool podcast. “They have declared that Allah has given Nigeria to them and that they can do with Nigeria whatever they want and once they have the political cover in these northern states, they start going after more land and more villages and start doing the killings.”
Saul, who also runs TruthNigeria.com, has documented hundreds of attacks on Christian villages.
He called it “death by a thousand attacks.”
“It’s not like a giant army going in and taking over major cities but systematically over time, they move in, they grow their population in a new area, they gain political power, and once they have the political power, the killing starts,” he said.
Meanwhile,Arnold — a former mayor of Blanco City, Texas — has taken the Nigerian government to task for what he describes as “witness repression” and complicity in the violence.
“There are at least four to 10 million IDPs who are eyewitnesses to genocide, and the government lies to them and labels them criminals,” he told Nigeria’s Punch newspaper Oct. 18. “They are being killed; they are dying of preventable illnesses and malnutrition. They are being abducted; they live in absolute squalor, denied by the government intentionally and in many ways.”
