Much media attention has focused on barbaric attacks perpetrated against Christians in Nigeria by Islamic Fulani herdsmen. However, an American missionary has said that the prevailing narrative omits “a significant part of the story”.
In a wide-ranging report sent to en, Rachelle Wenger, who has lived in rural Nigeria for almost 30 years, has claimed that accusations of Islamist genocide against Christians are “false and dangerous”, and that the conflict is “more ethnic than religious”. The report was originally produced for a missionary organisation.
She said that Fulani herders are often misrepresented as terrorists, when many are innocent families targeted by brutal attacks in a farmer-herder conflict fuelled by several factors, including a lack of resources, drug abuse, ineffective authority structures and inflammatory social media rhetoric.
