Podcast: Is violence in Nigeria driven by resources or religion? (Part 2)

Hassan John (00:00)
The Lord has answered prayers with so many communities in Nigeria.

I could give example of one of the attacks. It was in January 2010 in a place called Chualnyab in Jos where we were pinned down for about three hours and there were bullets whizzing all over our heads. And in that moment where houses were burning,

the attackers were coming towards the church, the only church that was standing there, the women came together and their children and they started singing. They were just singing and singing and for about 30 minutes, there was a huge smoke from the buildings that came towards where the women were. And in the cover of that smoke was where we were able to lead the women out of that community to safety because of that smoke cover from the burning buildings.

Abi McDougal (00:52)
In part one of this conversation with CSI partner Hassan John, we heard about ways attacks driven by Islamist ideology target Christians in Nigeria and about their stories of faith amid devastation.

Here in part two, we’ll zoom out to look at the roles the different groups and governments play how the violence pans out as we continue to see how faith is a key driver shaping the violence. We’ll talk about how we see recurring patterns and how what is happening in Nigeria connects to the broader region. We’ll look at which stories never get reported and which ones make international news.

like the mass abductions of hundreds of school-age children, happened in 2014 in the town of Chibok, sparking the Bring Back Our Girls campaign, and which just happened again in November 2025. We’ll hear about how we can stand with Nigerian brothers and sisters in Christ as one body around the world. Through it all, we’ll see the same God working in our midst.

Let’s get back to the conversation with Hassan.

Hassan John (02:10)
So we’ve seen God work in some of these miraculous happenings and events. just this thing of connecting to see, channeling whatever support, Christians and people that are able to send their help. And we know clearly and exactly where those help can go:

the communities on the grounds and the partners we work with. We also have seen the faithfulness also of those partners on the ground, knowing how they faithfully administer the funds that supporters and donors give for instance. And I must say that I think it’s only CSI and maybe two organizations that are helping those hundreds of communities in central Nigeria. The government isn’t helping.

Their houses have not been rebuilt. Their farms are destroyed. And there’s hardly anything that is coming from the government to help these communities.

Abi McDougal (03:05)
For sure. Yeah. And so you talk about central Nigeria having such a limited response of support. there has been some attention to Nigeria, but it tends to overlook that central Middle Belt region. And we know that the West most often tends to respond when its own interests are directly threatened. And so can you help us to understand those different threats when the West…

does get involved or when other international actors do get involved? How might that response differ from what is currently happening in the Middle Belt?

Hassan John (03:41)
Yeah, so generally, the West had responded much more to the Boko Haram insurgency because it came and immediately it hit the international stage. And there were, of course, the mainline media were there at that time. I think there’s hardly any major media organization that hadn’t gone to Borno State, that hadn’t written or reported on

the attacks of Boko Haram, especially of course, the Chibok school girls that became very popular. So it drew the attention of the international community. Unfortunately for the central region of Nigeria, it didn’t get that much attention. And there were so many reasons to that. But like I said, my argument will be because the Nigerian government and arguably the Nigerian army had also deliberately snuffed any

report that is coming out of the central region I know local reporters have been arrested or they’ve been forced not to say anything about the killings and the attacks in central Nigeria. So many of the local reporters, even if they came out, their proprietors or their editors wouldn’t even take that story. It’s only when it is

Abi McDougal (04:54)
Wow.

Hassan John (04:56)
attack or the casualties are that high, the consistent subsistence killing of Christians in central Nigeria, the killing of two people today, killing of five people the next week.

the killing of three in their farms, these things never get reported. Nobody even says anything about them. And I think also maybe there’s a fatigue that consistently these reports keep coming out and people do not want to get bothered by it. But also, because I think it comes to the Fulani militia groups and indeed the Fulani patrons that have tried to change the narrative, they have sold the

the unfortunate narrative that this is just a clash for natural resources. And because of that, the world seemed to have turned away. And more so that there is a desperate  push to distance the radical Islamic ideology that is fueling these killings. Because again, when you go online and you see videos of

of these Fulani militia group members that are posting about themselves carrying their AK-47 and the places they have attacked, or when you see the Facebook postings of the Nigerian police when they arrest any of these kids. And these are kids between 15 and 21, by the way. When they arrest these kids with AK-47s or with caches of ammunition, and they begin to say who they are, where they are coming from, and what they are using this ammunition for. But these things never get reported.

Abi McDougal (06:21)
Hmm. 

Hassan John (06:33)
They are just swept under the carpet because there is already a narrative that was bought and is comfortable for the West to swallow that it is crisis that are caused by climate change. So because of that also, the resources that should have gone in to help these communities are also not there

the international communities or countries to help the central region of Nigeria because they’ve affected the wrong narrative. And because even when the British Parliament, I think it was in January 2020 that brought the report whether genocide was being carried on in Nigeria, the APPG report of January 2020.

It was actually even swept away. And there was this denial that, then it didn’t happen. Now, if that report had been taken seriously, I will argue that a lot of lives would have been saved by now. But because it was dismissed and nothing was done about it, those that came to lobby to make sure that the report was ignored continue to perpetuate the atrocities that we continue to see.

Abi McDougal (07:33)
you

Right, well, and this is year after year, I mean going on even well before that, you mentioned the Chibok schoolgirls. Can you tell us briefly about that story and what your role was? Because I think some of our listeners may have heard that when it was in the news, but in the overwhelm of all the global news

gets swept away in the headlines. And so this is an issue that keeps coming up again and again and again, and that we’ve seen. And so can you just remind us that context and also share a little bit of your role in sounding the alarms about their kidnapping?

Hassan John (08:24)
Yeah. Yeah. So it was in April, 14th of April, if my memory serves me right, 2014. Like I said earlier on, I’ve been going from one community after the other in northeastern Nigeria during the Boko Haram insurgency between 2012 and 2014 particularly, to get to understand what was going on with the killings.

And in that place, had connected with a pastor in Chibok at that time because I had visited the village even before the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted. Now, in my trips going back and forth, we then eventually had the news that some schoolgirls were abducted in government secondary school in Chibok. But because I had been to the place, so I knew that school very well.

But of course, Nigerian government at that time denied that the abduction had taken place. In fact, the governor in Borno State at that time also said it wasn’t true. And back in Abuja, the president then, Goodluck Jonathan, said it was just some talk by his political enemies to discredit his government because of the Boko Haram insurgency. Now, during my going back and forth as well, I was reporting

for CNN on the attacks that were going on in that region. So I got contacted by CNN ⁓ to say this was what they were picking up about the abduction of schoolgirls. Could I please confirm it? So I did confirm that the abduction took place. And so CNN decided they wanted to do a story. But the challenge was going into, Borno State at that time was high risk. Boko Haram had already taken a lot of territory. So

to drive into Chibok was almost an impossible task. Only the army and if you had to go there, you had to go escorted by a convoy of soldiers. But well, to cut the long story I got contacted by CNN and asked if it was a story that we could do. And I said, yes, it was something that we could do. So they came, flew into Abuja. I think one of the teams and the Kenya.

But we met in Abuja, plotted our trip to Chibok, and I will not go through all the hassles and the challenges that we went through in getting into Chibok because it will take so much time. But just to say, we were able to eventually with a small police escort to get us into Chibok. And it was there that we reported the abduction of the Chibok school girls. And I thank God

Abi McDougal (10:46)
Mm.

Hassan John (11:00)
that it was at that moment that immediately the world knew that it was true that these girls were abducted and they disappeared in the night because we met some of the girls that escaped that night when Boko Haram attacked the school. So their testimonies came out, but from then on, I was also in contact with the mothers of the girls, parents, and we kept interacting again and again and again 

about how best the church could help them, how we could provide whatever little assistance we could. And it was very little because going into Chibok, like I said, was almost an impossible task at that time. But then the Bring Back Our Girls campaign started with Michelle Obama at that time holding that sign about Bring Back Our Girls campaign. And then it got on the international stage. So yeah, that was how we got involved.

the role as a local producer for CNN to be able to bring out that story.

Abi McDougal (12:04)
Yeah, thank you so much, Hassan. Let’s shift to take a regional look at this situation beyond Nigeria. So these groups that you’ve talked about, there’s different groups in play. And are these groups primarily domestic to Nigeria? And thinking about the Fulani militias in contrast to Boko Haram, how are these groups connected to other actors?

Hassan John (12:29)
Yeah, thank you. That’s a very good question. So from what we know, Boko Haram, when it started, was able to mobilize its membership. What the army didn’t know, or what it refused to acknowledge when Boko Haram came up in 2009, was that Boko Haram had a followership of close to about 50,000 members.

But the government at that time dismissed it as, there were just this little bunch of riffraffs that they could deal with within a week or two. And what they also didn’t acknowledge was that the members of Boko Haram, especially the leaders, were well-educated and they had their connection with Islamic State in Syria, the ISIS at that time. Even though nobody could really establish that connection,

But what Boko Haram was doing was it was clearly replicating everything that ISIL was doing. So in terms of their video posting and their style of attack, and they also who could produce ⁓ look the bombs, is ⁓ IDEs and be able to place them to cause so much mayhem. As a matter of fact,

At that time, Boko Haram attacked the entire military barracks in Maiduguri and nearly sacked it until the local vigilantes teamed up with the army and they were able to drive Boko Haram out of Maiduguri. So that was how powerful they were. But also, between 2009 all the way down to about 2012 was when we started seeing their connection with the Fulani. Because Boko Haram was the

Abi McDougal (14:09)
Mm-hmm.

Hassan John (14:20)
was the attraction. It was the thing for any radicalized Muslim who wanted to join the adventure. I met a woman in Borno State, one of my trips, a Muslim who was happy to send her son to be a suicide bomber for Boko Haram because she felt that it was all how do I put it now? It was all contributing into a holy war, a jihad against the infidels.

So there was this attraction.

Haram was paying, I think, about 50,000 naira, or is it 100,000 naira, to those that they were recruiting into Boko

as we heard, and I think it’s also published in some of the local dailies.

But of course, with the attraction came the Fulani, it came with other tribes also from central Nigeria ⁓ and far Northern Nigeria, states like Yobi.

even Kaduna and Sokoto, that is why we now start to see cells of Boko Haram that were popping up in states like Kaduna and in Plateau and in Nasarawa and indeed in Abuja itself. Actually, was a cell in as far as Lagos, farthest state in the country towards the Atlantic Ocean. So they were very widespread and very connected.

The sad thing was the army kept denying this connection again and again and again. But when Boko Haram split there was this also bigger attraction with the al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, now those that have teamed up to form JNIM, that is the radical Islamic groups that are currently now attacking Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, coming down to Northern,

Ivory Coast and Togo, there is this loose connection between them. But there is also the Ansaru terrorist group that has also moved now into Nigeria and is taking so much territory in Niger State. So there is this loose connection, not a centralized command like ISIL had in the beginning. I think I will argue that they’ve learned to adapt. ⁓

to the international attention and of course the presence of the international forces in Mali and in Niger monitoring this event and actually picking out their leaders if they’re able to identify them with the drone base that is there. But the issue is that there is this loose connection of

Constituting cells, setting up a leader, and then moving on to the next region to set up another leader and another sect, and they’re moving, but they have this loose affiliation, even with the Fulani’s in central Nigeria. And that’s why you could see this sophistication in their weaponry. You could see the sophistication in their media campaigns. And you could see also their attraction to politicians as well. Not only the government in Mali or the government in Burkina Faso, but also,

Abi McDougal (17:19)
Hmm.

Hassan John (17:24)
in Nigeria where we have, I mean, again, you can only hear all the utterances posted on the social media to see the attraction of these politicians. As much as there is argument that says it has to do with the mines and the economy and the gold that is in states like Katzina or Sokoto in the northwestern part of Nigeria, of course, now with the French mining there.

Abi McDougal (17:28)
Hmm.

Hassan John (17:53)
But it’s all muddled up, well, let me not go into the challenges of the attacks in Northwestern Nigeria. It’s a completely different thing. Again, which quickly brings me to the argument, therefore, that we hear Nigerian politicians are now making to say, ⁓ Muslims are killed as well as Christians. True, Muslims are killed, but not for the same reason, and not in the same region, and not for the same ideology.

Abi McDougal (18:14)
Right? Yes.

Hassan John (18:23)
But you see, to confuse

the entire thing and of course, just to make sure Donald Trump and the US does not raise sanctions against such groups that have been identified, is to try to muddle the whole thing to say, ⁓ Muslims are also killed. But there is a need to clarify the distinctions. And I say again, the devil is in the details is when

You look at those details and you ask all those that are making those assertions to put their facts on the table. And then you will see that there’s a complete distinction between the genocide that is happening in central Nigeria and those others that are being killed in other parts of Nigeria.

Abi McDougal (18:47)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right. And as Christians, we have our hope that ultimately God is the one who can bring full justice. But we know we are called in the here and now to stand with those who are suffering and particularly to be part of this body of Christ, that if we want to be representatives of Christ in the world and be faithful witnesses of the gospel, we have to first be connected to our brothers and sisters around the world to learn from them, to honor their examples of faith and to stand with them.

under persecution as they’re facing persecution that we come alongside and look for ways to support. Hassan, what would you hope to see moving forward for the situation to begin to improve?

Hassan John (19:47)
I think there are two levels here. The fact of the matter is the Nigerian government on the one hand must be pressurized to come to the reality that Nigeria as a country has a structural problem. And the structural problem, like I mentioned from the beginning, is to do with the constitution of the country as it is. Because arguably, we have a country, but we never had a nation.

There is not a common vision and a common dream for this country to move forward successfully unless we come back to the drawing table and ask ourselves the hard questions and discuss sincerely to say, can we have free communities that are happy to align themselves and cover their own identities and live.

in their own faiths without anybody pressurizing or forcing them to convert to one religion or the other. Because that is not on the table. that has been swept completely under the table because those that benefit from the system now, ⁓

would rather have it the way it is and have the first class, the second class citizenships and the third class depending on which part of the country you’re coming from. And so to impress and force their own ⁓ political and economic ⁓ advantages over every other region. So that’s on the one part. The other part really is that Christians

must begin to find their voices. Yes, we, I mean, there have been all this fear of not wanting to say something out so that you don’t get arrested by the Department of State Security or get arrested by the police, we’re just simply voicing, putting your voice out in the public space. But Christians must learn to be honest and faithful in putting forward.

whatever atrocities and persecution they suffer, irrespective of who may or may not like it, because we have several instances of persons that have been arrested or invited by the police simply because they said one thing or the other, and they were said to be propagating hate speech under that cover. And they’ve been intimidated by the security forces. And same thing with journalists. But I think invariably what I’m saying is that

Abi McDougal (22:13)
Mm.

Hassan John (22:14)
The atmosphere for Christians to speak is very limited, but that shouldn’t be an issue why they can’t speak. But much more above all, think, is also that Christians must always practice their faith faithfully. Show the love that the Bible has asked us all to show. Demonstrate, not just show, but demonstrate it even in the public space, even in the face of death, like we’ve seen so many of the Christians have done.

Abi McDougal (22:32)
Mm.

Hassan John (22:44)
You know, that is a powerful message And let me even quickly add that despite all these tragedies, there are groups of Christians that have continued with expressing this love, their mission and evangelism, and even Muslims are converting to Christianity, even in these tragedies. So it’s something that we’ve seen on

even some of those villages that are still controlled by Boko Haram today, there are Christians that are still going on their one-on-one, just expressing their love and sharing the love of Christ to these communities. So yes, a lot can be done even in this. Prayers have consistently been the

areas where we have seen God intervene again and again and again. And Christians must continue to pray, not just the Christians in Nigeria, but even globally. I think a lot of Christians believe in Nigeria, that it’s only prayers that have cracked the shell that it seems from nowhere.

the US president Donald Trump put Nigeria back on the CPC. Because for 10 years, Christians have been asking and praying that somehow their voices will be heard. And then it seemed like from nowhere, there was a declaration and put in Nigeria and now we have an international attention.

Abi McDougal (23:55)
Hmm.

Hassan John (24:10)
These are the miracles that Christians have consistently prayed and they’ve seen God answer these prayers.

Abi McDougal (24:10)
Right.

Right. Well, and as you talk about Christians in Nigeria, I mean, talk about taking seriously Christ’s teachings to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us and really believing in the weight of that redemption and just how much is really possible. really humbling to get to hear. And even for me, this is some of the first times that I’m hearing these stories from you, Hassan. And so thank you so much for sharing that with us today. you have any

final words of encouragement for Christians around the world who have not experienced this kind of persecution or not experienced this type of suffering specifically in how we can respond faithfully to this crisis.

Hassan John (25:02)
Yeah, Abi, I think let me actually start by thanking Christians all over the world that have stood with the churches in Nigeria and they’ve prayed, you know, year in, year out, you know, till today. And they are still praying I must say thank you just to assure you that God has answered and is still answering all these prayers. And so please do not relent.

And also to say, to also assure you that despite this persecution, the churches in Nigeria, especially in central Nigeria, are still standing strong. They are still growing, if anything else. Like I mentioned a moment ago, mission work, evangelism is still going on. And so we still believe that the salvation for mankind in this region, especially with the hate and the darkness that is there,

It’s only the light of the gospel that can bring both the spiritual and the physical deliverance in this region. it’s just to encourage Christians all over the world to please continue not to get weary in these prayers. And I will also say that to reach out in whichever way they can. I think some years back, I’ve been getting postcards and letters each time I traveled back to Nigeria from Europe here.

You know, to Christians, are letters of encouragement to say to our dear beloved brother or dear beloved sister, just to let you know that we are praying for you. And then I’ve carried this, especially during Christmas breaks like this and at the end of the year. you know, it’s amazing to see what such a little note does to a person who is undergoing persecution because they know that somebody is also standing there with them.

Abi McDougal (26:18)
well.

Hassan John (26:47)
So it brings this hope, this encouragement to say, you just remain there, be strong. We have your back here. We are on our knees for you. So that has been tremendous for so many of us back in Nigeria. And if you choose to support in any way, in any way again, like I said,

that CSI had been there with partners who have made a difference and a lot of support that have changed or saved the lives of so many people. Because this is it, Abi, you see. When people send support from anywhere,

to Christians in Nigeria. The support of the item, it does not matter whether it is some medical equipment or it is a bag of rice or whatever it is, two things happen immediately. Yes, they collect and receive an immediate relief, but the second part is they get the strength to know that somebody is there standing with them. For women and a lot of

men out there, there is a restoration of their dignity because of the support they get, they do not go begging.

Abi McDougal (28:01)
Mm-hmm.

Hassan John (28:05)
But what Christians have done all over the world in sending those little, no matter how little, it’s been, you can’t, I just can’t even begin to explain the impact that kind of little support makes. So I will just encourage our Christian brothers and sisters, whatever you can do, nothing is small. A prayer, a whisper of a word to the Lord is tremendous.

Abi McDougal (28:17)
Thank

Yes, that’s such a good word to end on. Thank you, Hassan. We really appreciate it. We appreciate your work, your faithful witness and service. And thank you for speaking with us today.

Hassan John (28:40)
Thank you for having me.

Abi McDougal (28:44)
CSI works with local Christian partners facing persecution around the world to bring religious liberty and human dignity for everyone. To learn more about how you can stand with the global body of Christ, visit CSI-INT.org. If you found this informative, convicting, or encouraging, share it with a friend today.

This podcast is produced by Christian Solidarity International. The music is by Matt and Katie Gustafson.

I’m your host, Abi McDougal, and this has been season one of the Christian Solidarity Podcast. Thanks for listening.