False genocide narrative—Mike Arnold’s claims expose ignorance of nigeria’s conflict realities
By: Zagazola Makama
The recent claims by an American, Mike Arnold a self-acclaimed former mayor of Blanco City, Texas — alleging that the Nigerian government is complicit in what he calls a “Christian genocide” are not only baseless but also a gross distortion of facts surrounding Nigeria’s decade-long insurgency.
Arnold, who claimed to have undertaken a “fact-finding mission” in Nigeria’s Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, presents a narrative so detached from the realities of the North-East that it borders on dangerous ignorance. His attempt to frame the Boko Haram insurgency as a state-backed religious extermination campaign is not supported by any credible data, historical context, or independent report from reputable local or international organizations.
The Boko Haram conflict, which erupted in 2009, has claimed over 250,000 lives, displaced millions, and devastated livelihoods across Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa States. With over 13 billion U.S dollars lost in damages according to world bank. However, a closer examination of casualty figures, displacement patterns, and humanitarian records shows that over 90 percent of victims are Muslimsthe same faith professed by the majority of the North-East’s population.
At the height of the insurgency between 2013 and 2015, almost 24 local government areas in northern Borno, including some of the most hit like Bama, Marte, Gwoza, Kukawa, Abadam, and Guzamala, Malam Fatori, Damasak, Dikwa, were overrun by Boko Haram. The terrorists imposed a perverted version of Islamic law, killing imams, burning mosques, and slaughtering entire Muslim communities who refused to pledge allegiance to them.
In Bama alone, more than 2,000 people were massacred in a single day in 2014, and thrown to the well and bridge, all of them Muslims. In Baga, the story was similar mass killings of civilians, destruction of mosques, and the torching of entire communities.
Before the world heard about the Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction, over 300 school girls were abducted in Konduga, all Muslims but the incident received little international attention. The insurgency has left behind 56,000 unaccompanied children with no trace of their parents and forced nearly 300,000 Nigerians to flee into neighbouring Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. Those are few incidents.
These are the verifiable facts documented by organizations such as the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) not the fantasies of a man who parachuted into Abuja and presumed expertise on a conflict far more complex than his superficial assessment suggests.
Arnold’s claim that “Christians are being targeted for extermination” betrays not just ignorance but a clear attempt to weaponize religion for political and propaganda purposes. His so-called research, by his own admission, relied on anecdotal interviews with a handful of IDPs, mostly from Gwoza, an area once heavily contested between Boko Haram and ISWAP.
That he extrapolated a “national genocide” narrative from a few personal conversations in one part of the North-East reveals either a dangerous lack of understanding or a deliberate effort to mislead the global community.
Security analysts, including Zagazola Makama, have described Arnold’s comments as a calculated attempt to provoke international outrage and obstruct critical military assistance to Nigeria. According to them, this sensational narrative appears tailored to discredit the Nigerian Armed Forces and the Federal Government in the eyes of the global community, thereby undermining ongoing counterterrorism cooperation.
Nigeria’s counter-insurgency operations and humanitarian responses are being executed under the constant supervision of the United Nations, African Union, European Union, and various international NGOs. With active participation of agencies such as the UNHCR, UNDP, UNFPA, and OHCHR, and daily oversight by international humanitarian monitors, it is inconceivable that a government-led genocide could occur undetected.
Furthermore, embassies of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the European Union Delegation to Nigeria maintain extensive field monitoring and security liaison networks. None of their periodic security and human rights reports have ever described the Nigerian conflict as a genocide — let alone a religiously motivated one.
Instead, they uniformly characterize it as an asymmetric insurgency led by violent extremist groupswho indiscriminately target Muslims and Christians alike, destroy mosques and churches, abduct women and children, and terrorize both rural and urban populations.
The danger of misinformation
Such reckless statements by foreigners like Arnold, who lack any professional grounding in Nigerian security or humanitarian affairs, could have grave consequences. By falsely portraying the conflict as a “Christian genocide,” he risks inflaming sectarian tensions, discrediting genuine victims, and jeopardizing hard-won progress in peacebuilding and rehabilitation across the region.
What Nigeria needs is unity of purpose, not imported propaganda. The Armed Forces of Nigeria, through Operation HADIN KAI and other joint task forces, continue to record major operational successes liberating communities, rescuing captives, and facilitating the return of displaced persons under the Borno State Government’s Resettlement Framework.
To reduce this long and painful struggle to a sectarian smear campaign is not just inaccurate; it is an insult to the memory of the thousands of Muslim and Christian civilians, soldiers, and aid workers who have paid the ultimate price in this war.
Mike Arnold’s claim of a government-backed “Christian genocide” in Nigeria is a baseless fabrication lacking empirical evidence, context, or credibility. It ignores the overwhelming Muslim casualty figures, disregards independent UN reports, and attempts to politicize human suffering for sensational impact. Nigeria’s insurgency is not a religious war but a war against terror one that has devastated all communities regardless of faith.
Any serious researcher, journalist, or policymaker knows this. Those who claim otherwise, like Arnold, belong not in the company of truth-seekers but among the architects of misinformation whose careless words risk undoing years of sacrifice and progress in Nigeria’s fight for peace.
