Christian genocide and the dangers of mischaracterisation, By Femi Fani-Kayode

There is no doubt that Christians are being targetted and slaughtered in massive numbers in Nigeria. No-one can deny that. It is a reality that we as Christians have lived with for many years. What needs to be understood however is that in the last 15 years as many Muslims have been targetted and slaughtered by the same group of heartless terrorists as well.

There is no-one in Nigeria that has spoken up for the rights of Christians, spoken out against Christian marginalisation and persecution and warned about the reality and dangers of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamist terror more than yours truly over the last 30 years.

Whether it be the sharia debates, the debate on the secularity of the Nigerian state, the debate on the plight of Christians in Northern Nigeria or the debate on ethnic and religious hegemony and domination, I have been deeply involved and invested in these matters right from the beginning.

In each of these prolonged and often acrimonious and volatile debates I have played a leading role and held my corner.

For those that doubt this the records are clear and I suggest that they go back and read all I have written and said about these vexing issues over the last three decades.

I have also made it perfectly clear over the years that it would be an honour for me to sacrifice all, including my life, in defence of my faith and that will never change. That was my position then and that is my position today.

My knowledge about the experiences of Christians in Nigeria is extensive and my insight and understanding of the history of our country is next to none.

This places me in a unique position and gives me the ability to speak with authority about the ongoing debate on whether or not what we are witnessing in Nigeria today is indeed “Christian genocide”.

In the last three weeks I have written two widely published essays on this matter.

The first is titled ‘The Fiction Of Christian Genocide and the Conspiracy Against Nigeria’ and the second is titled ‘A Warning To Senator Ted Cruz’.

For those that have not read them already I recommend them both in order to get a clearer and deeper perspective on the matter.

This contribution is my third to this increasingly contentious and volatile debate and I sincerely hope that it brings more insight and understanding to the issues under consideration.

Permit me to get to the meat of the matter.

There is no doubt that Christians are being targetted and slaughtered in massive numbers in Nigeria.

No-one can deny that. It is a reality that we as Christians have lived with for many years.

What needs to be understood however is that in the last 15 years as many Muslims have been targetted and slaughtered by the same group of heartless terrorists as well.

To mischaracterise what is going on in our nation as “Christian genocide” is a knee jerk and emotional reaction to a very complex and profound problem.

It is an eloquent testimony to the sordid and divisive disinformation, misinformation and falsehood that those that insist on describing it in such terms have resorted to.

It is a gross, perfidious and unforgivable mischaracterisation of the facts on the ground, a Goebellian misrepresentation of reality and a perverse inversion of the truth.

It is also a specious, simplistic, shallow and flawed perspective which is deeply rooted in ignorance, mischief, malevolence, malice, deceit and intellectual dishonesty, which does not in any way define the very real problems or provide a lasting solution to the monuemental challenges that Nigerian Christians are facing and which is designed to divide us and pave the way for a well-orchestrated and carefully scripted attempt to destabilise our nation, thrust us into a volatile season and cycle of mutual suspicion, sectarian violence and calmuny and set us up for an unconstitutional regime change before or by 2027.

To insist on perpetuating and propagating this mischaracterisation and falsehood is an extreemly dangerous path to tread which, if care is not taken, will ultimately make matters far worse.

For example the frantic public call by Mr. Eric Prince (the notorious founder of the discredited American private security company of murderous and savage western mercenaries that wreaked havoc in Iraq after the American invasion known as Blackwater) to the Vatican, the Pope, prominent Christian leaders from all over the world and President Donald Trump to “fund and support” a private Christian army which he will gladly put together and lead to come to Nigeria to “protect the Christian community and kill Muslims” is not only irresponsible and unhelpful but is also fraught with many dangers.

Again the call by U.S. Congressman Chris Smith to Trump to “arm Christians in Nigeria with American weapons” and to use the American Airforce to “bomb Muslim communities in our country” will lead to a further escalation of violence and open armed conflict between hitherto law- abiding Christians and Muslims who are not only fully integrated but who have also lived peacefully together in harmony over the years. Sending arms to aide one community and U.S. war planes to bomb the other cannot possibly augur well for us.

To send arms to the Nigerian Government to assist in our fight against the terrorists is one thing and would of course be a welcome and laudable initiative and development but to send arms and private mercenary armies from the West to fight for Christians in our country and kill our Muslim brothers or for Christian communites to receive arms directly from the Americans whilst the Muslims are bombed out of existence by western jets is madness and an open invitation to chaos and fratricidal butchery in Nigeria.

It would indeed mark the end of our country as we know it and the beginning of a civil war which will last for the next 50 years and which will have cataclysmic consequences for the Nigerian people, the west African sub region, the African continent and indeed much of the world.

Such insane and provocative rhetoric from the likes of Prince and Moore must cease forthwith. They do not love our country more than we do and we must not allow them to light a fire or ignite a bomb that will consume us all.

Outside of this the mischaracteristion of our situation has an additional three obvious and immediate consequences.

Firstly it negates the idea that Muslims are being targetted by the same terrorists that are killing Christians.

Secondly it belittles and underplays the massive loss of Muslims lives and suggests that those lives count for nothing.

Finally it runs the risk of further dividing our people on religious lines by casting all Muslims as the perpetrators and only Christians as the victims.

This cannot augur well for the unity of our country and for our collective fight against terror.

The American and western leaders that are propagating and spouting it, with the help of the CIA and their local assets, obviously have an insidious hidden agenda and a sinister ulterior motive for doing so.

You do not have to be a bright bulb or a Professor of world history to appreciate that.

All you need to do is to have a little common sense, a good memory, an understanding of the times we are living in and observe what the Americans and their western allies have been doing in the Middle East, North Africa and indeed much of the world ever since 9/11.

The sad reality of Nigeria is not “Christian genocide” but the genocide of BOTH Christians and Muslims by the hands of a handful of savage and barbaric terrorist militias that falsely claim to be Muslims but that do not in actual fact represent any faith.

They represent only satan, their insatiable bloodlust and their sadistic, depraved, delusional, psychotic and psycopathic disposition.

Some of them, like Boko Haram, ISWAP, Al Qaeda and Ansaru operate mainly in the North, murdering and displacing both Christians and Muslims with impunity and no remorse whilst others, like ESN, who claim to be championing the cause of Christians and Jews, operate mainly in the South East again murdering and displacing both Christians and Muslims.

They, like the Haramites and their genocidal partners in crime, do not represent any faith other than that of the devil who has sent them.

Our duty as Christians is to foster national, religious and ethnic unity by closing ranks with our Muslim brothers and fighting our common enemy which these terrorist groups represent.

Anything less than that will only divide us further and take us down the brutal and bloody road to Kigali and, God forbid, a Rwandan-style and horrific showdown and a genocidal storm of cataclysmic carnage.

Our security agencies have worked extremely hard over the last two years in containing the scourge of terror that has afflicted us.

This is proved by the fact that a record number of terrorists have been killed and many of their most dangerous and wanted commanders and leaders have been captured and detained.