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.
While she acknowledged that horrific religious attacks against Christians do occur, she claimed that Christians attack Muslims in similarly barbaric fashion, but that such attacks often go unreported due to Christians benefitting from greater access to Western media contacts compared to their Islamic counterparts.
Wenger said that calls for genocide within Nigeria often target “Fulani, not Christians”, with anti-Fulani hate speech “widespread in churches and even printed in prayer bulletins”. She claimed that many Christians from other ethnic groups even view Fulani Christians as “inferior” due to their ethnicity, at best, and “spies at worst”.
Wenger argued that listening to both Christians and Muslims is crucial, as “escalating hatred” has the potential to cause “religious radicalisation”. She also called for greater awareness of the suffering of peaceful Fulani people, for a different approach to land ownership to be adopted, and for the US to refrain from involvement.
However, other missionaries disagree about what is going on. A UK-based Release International associate who has ministered in difficult parts of Nigeria told en that potential US intervention, following its recent classification of the nation as a Country of Particular Concern, should be “genuinely sought” by the authorities as they fail to control the situation.
The associate questioned why accusations of genocide are “denied, deflected and dismissed” by some, given the scale of evidence, including the widely-reported 7,000 Christians killed in 2025, hundreds of mass graves, and hundreds of decimated communities in Plateau State at the hands of well-armed and organised Fulani Islamic militia groups.
The associate accused the authorities of “deliberately muddying the waters” and “scrambling to change the narrative” in light of recent American attention, exposing a “deliberate and continuous attempt” to silence Christian victims by implying that the Fulani tribe as a whole is being persecuted despite consistent testimony from victims that their attackers have been organised, well-armed and well-funded Fulani jihadist militia groups.
He said: “Anyone familiar with Christian persecution in Nigeria knows that Christians have never been on the offensive. If anything, they have historically been the victims of unprovoked attacks … Given the hostility Christians face, it is illogical to claim they would launch large-scale attacks on Muslims. While some isolated reprisals have occurred in communities repeatedly attacked by Islamist militia groups, the narrative that more Muslims have been killed remains unproven and appears to be a deliberate distortion.”
The associate called on the Nigerian state to facilitate discussion between all regions concerning the nation’s Constitution and political setup in the longer term. However, the associate first called for it to seek help from the US, who have shown interest in addressing the situation, to ensure that the nation does not become a “failed state”.
