Formal Statement on Widespread Violence and Displacement in Nigeria

October 14, 2025

By Mayor Mike Arnold, MBA

Founder, Africa Arise International / Africa Arise USA

Presented at Abuja Hilton, 4 p.m. WAT on Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Contributors:

1. US Amb. Lewis Lucke (retired)
2. Pastor Jed D’Grace
3. Mr. Judd Saul

I. Purpose and Credentials

My name is Mike Arnold. I recently served as the elected Mayor of the City of Blanco, Texas. I first visited Nigeria in 2010 as a board member of Unity for Africa. Since then, I have made 15 trips to Nigeria, including six extended investigative missions since 2019. I founded Africa Arise International and Africa Arise USA in 2019. I have frequently been quoted in top newspapers and TV news broadcasts here. I have never extracted anything from Nigeria beyond modest gifts. My closest and most trusted friends are native Nigerians. I come only to give, serve, and stand with the people and nation I dearly love as my second home.

I was personally invited here today by National Security Advisor Nuhu Ribadu and influencer Reno Omokri. The sole stated (written) charge given to me for this trip is simply to meet certain key people, and then declare the truth. I know what’s at stake and take this very seriously. While my plane ticket and accommodations have been paid for, I have not asked for, been offered, nor received any compensation or promise of compensation for this. Neither am I connected in any way or compensated by the US Government. I am here independently and this statement is made without coercion or inducement of any kind.

I also note that numerous top US officials have been briefed and are personally aware of my being here, the purpose of my trip, my specific itinerary, and expected return date. At their request, I am providing updates as to my status. These include but are not limited to my Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, and Congressman Chip Roy, the White House, US State Department and Acting Ambassador, as well as a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from the New York Times, and their International Editor.

Also note that as I present this statement, it is being simultaneously distributed not only to these people, who are awaiting it, and also posted online for all to access.

This statement is my formal account and analysis of facts, findings, and firsthand documentation of claims of widespread violence, displacement, and atrocity crimes in Nigeria, primarily directed against Christian populations in the North and Middle Belt, and whether this rises to the level of genocide. It is addressed to journalists, international observers, human rights bodies, and policymakers in the United States and abroad.

We have traveled to cities, villages, and remote encampments: from Bokkos, Jos, and Gwoza to Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Bukuma and Makoko. I have interviewed governors, cabinet ministers, traditional rulers, two former Presidents, and others. I have met orphans whose parents were hacked to death. I have built schools in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and documented over 80 hours of filmed testimony and evidence, at great personal risk, soon to be released in our documentary film Me & Ms. Hanatu. My findings carry the weight of direct experience.[1]

II. Nigeria in 2010: A Nation at Peace

In 2010, Nigeria was a beacon of rising prosperity and religious tolerance, often cited as the only country where radical Islam was being pushed back. Attacks were rare and sparked national outrage. Recognized IDPs were effectively zero, with only minimal displacement from localized communal conflicts—a stark contrast to the crisis that followed, marked by a 1,200% surge in IDPs by 2011 due to Boko Haram’s escalation.[2] This prior absence of a displacement crisis is both verifiable and damning.

III. What Changed? A Deliberate Crisis

By 2014, Nigeria’s stability was shattered. Foreign meddling, including U.S. involvement, played a pivotal role in the 2015 election, enabling regime change that emboldened actors who ignored or enabled extremist violence.[3][4] High-placed eyewitness testimony confirms this interference, with firms like Cambridge Analytica further skewing the political landscape.[5]

Radical jihadist elements, fueled by foreign fighters from Libya and the Sahel post-2011 Arab Spring—not invaders, but invited—flooded into Nigeria, amplifying Boko Haram and ISWAP.[6][7] Today, over four million Nigerians are displaced—a very conservative estimate based in part on my work in hidden camps denied by officials who label victims “criminals” or “vagrants,” rendering UN and government figures entirely unreliable.[8] The vast majority are Christians, driven from their homes by deliberate political engineering and radical conquest, while mostly Muslim IDP encampments do exist.

IV. Our Team’s Field Work

Since 2019, our team has conducted relentless frontline research:

1. Interviewed survivors across multiple states.
2. Operate schools in two IDP camps for both Christians and Muslims, with a third under construction, with a present total of 550+ students. We provide free, high quality education.
3. Filmed camps the UN and Nigerian government deny exist.
4. Recorded numerous IDP testimonials via https://www.youtube.com/@My.Voice.Matters
5. In late 2024, my team visited and filmed in Ngoshe, Gwoza LGA, Borno State—a once-thriving Christian farming community now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Recent 2025 attacks confirm ongoing devastation, with surviving Christians confined to militarized zones where leaving risks abduction or execution.[9][10] Our firsthand proof exposes a reality ignored by officials. Many people of Gwoza have been refugees in Cameroon for over a decade, abandoned by Nigeria while those who returned languish in the FCT, their homelands occupied by Boko Haram as the seat of its caliphate for years now.

V. Consistent Pattern of Targeted Destruction

Across regions and years, we’ve documented a chilling pattern:

1. Churches destroyed.
2. Mosques left untouched.
3. Christian homes torched.
4. Jihadists resettled on captured land.
5. Authorities deny or excuse the attacks.

While some Muslims resisting extremism are targeted, the overwhelming evidence—thousands of churches razed, obviously selective violence—leads some to claim this is a faith-based genocide against Christians and those rejecting radical Islam.[11][12]

VI. What Drives the Violence?

This is not chaos but a calculated campaign driven by three forces:

1. Radical Islamic Conquest: Armed groups, bolstered by foreign fighters from Libya/Sahel post-Arab Spring, seek to impose extremist ideology with local enablers and political protection, described by eyewitnesses as “jihad by occupation.”[6][7]
2. Blood Mineral Extraction: Nigeria loses $9 billion annually to illicit mining of gold, tin, and lithium, with a significant portion—estimated at 10%—funding violence and corruption. Heavy machinery and foreign buyers appear days after displacements, exploiting lands of the displaced.[13][14]
3. Political Realignment: War masquerades as politics—local government areas overrun, electoral districts redrawn by force, militants resettled to skew demographics, dismantling communities deemed inconvenient.

VII. The Euphemism of “Farmer-Herder Clashes”

The term “farmer-herder clashes” is cynical doublespeak, weaponizing historical land disputes to mask jihadist conquest. For centuries, herders and farmers coexisted with rare, non-lethal disputes. Now, villages are erased, churches leveled, and tens of thousands are dead. This is systematic terror, not grazing conflicts—a lie akin to calling Bosnia’s ethnic cleansing a “neighborhood spat.”[8][15] These targeted, deadly attacks are the same whether labeled “herders,” “bandits” or “insurgents.” The puppets may change but the same forces pull the strings. A jihadi by any other name is just as deadly. Mincing words over labels appears to be intentional obfuscation.

While global attention often focuses on Boko Haram and ISWAP, the majority of killings and displacements across Nigeria’s Middle Belt are in fact carried out by the Radical Islamist Fulani Ethnic Militia. Numerous field reports, satellite imagery, and survivor testimonies confirm that these Fulani militant groups—often operating under political protection and mislabeled as “herders”— are responsible for the most widespread, systematic, and sustained attacks on Christian farming communities. Their campaigns extend well beyond traditional grazing disputes, encompassing organized massacres, forced displacement, and the strategic occupation of conquered lands. Today, these Fulani militias represent the single most lethal terrorist threat to Nigeria’s internal stability—surpassing Boko Haram and ISWAP combined in reach, frequency, and civilian death toll.

VIII. The Crime of Obfuscation

I have personally seen ongoing efforts by officials and their loyal media to bury the truth:

1. Sanitizing massacres as “conflict.”
2. Labeling displaced survivors “vagrants” and “criminals.”
3. Refusing to name perpetrators.

This is not confusion—it is complicity. To play semantic games while people die is beyond obscene. There can be no solution while leaders play word games to hide the truth.

IX. Legal Definition of Genocide

Per Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), genocide includes acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm;

(c) Inflicting conditions to bring about physical destruction;

(d) Preventing births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children to another group.

The evidence is undeniable: targeted killings, mass displacement, destruction of homes and churches, denial of aid, and erasure of Christian identity.

X. Conclusion: My Formal Finding

As an objective expert and eyewitness, a longtime lover of and traveler throughout Nigeria with access at the highest levels, based on more than five years of investigation, field interviews, firsthand documentation, and deep consultation with top scholars, statesmen and legal experts, I declare this without any shadow of a doubt:

The campaign of violence and displacement in Northern and Middle Belt Nigeria does indeed constitute a calculated, currentand long-running GENOCIDE against Christian communities and other religious minorities, without any reasonable doubt.[1][11][12]

To continue to deny this is to be complicit in these atrocities.

I say this not in anger, but in truth and grief. My stated assignment from my host was to speak the truth and I have done that to the best of my ability.

I believe Nigeria has a bright future. I believe in Christian-Muslim harmony. I believe good people of every tribe and faith must stand against this evil. But first, we must name it.

Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God.

(REFERENCES BELOW)

References

[1] Open Doors, World Watch List 2025,https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/nigeria/

[2] Frontiers in Human Dynamics, “Conflict-Induced Trends in Nigeria,” 2022,https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-dynamics/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2022.1009651/full

[3] Premium Times, “How U.S. Firm Helped Buhari Win 2015 Election,” 2015,https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/180123-how-u-s-firm-helped-buhari-win-2015-election.html

[4] BuzzFeed News, “Democratic Operatives in Nigeria Election,” 2015,https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidsirota/democratic-strategists-who-helped-obama-are-now-working-to-el

[5] The Guardian, “Cambridge Analytica’s Role in Nigeria’s 2015 Elections,” 2018,https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-nigeria-election-data

[6] Council on Foreign Relations, “Boko Haram and the Sahel Connection,” 2023,https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/boko-haram

[7] JSTOR, “Islamic State and Sahel Spillover into Nigeria,” 2022,https://www.jstor.org/stable/26976645

[8] International Crisis Group, “Herders vs. Farmers: Resolving Deadly Conflict in Nigeria,” 2023,https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/nigeria/302-herders-against-farmers-nigerias-expanding-deadly-conflict

[9] Premium Times, “Boko Haram Attacks Ngoshe, Gwoza in 2025,” 2025,https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/614523-boko-haram-attacks-gwoza-kills-five.html

[10] UNOCHA, “Borno State Humanitarian Situation Report,” 2025,https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/nigeria/north-east-nigeria-humanitarian-situation-update-january-2025

[11] U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2024 Annual Report: Nigeria,https://www.uscirf.gov/countries/nigeria

[12] APPG FoRB, “Nigeria: Unfolding Genocide?” 2020,https://appgfreedomofreligionorbelief.org/nigeria-unfolding-genocide/

[13] NEITI, “2023 Report on Illicit Mining in Nigeria,”https://neiti.gov.ng/reports/mining-sector

[14] Global Witness, “Blood Minerals in Nigeria’s Conflict Zones,” 2024,https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/natural-resource-governance/nigeria-mining-conflict/

[15] Genocide Watch, “Nigeria: Media Misrepresentation of Violence,” 2023,https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/nigeria-farmer-herder-narrative