STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump says the Pentagon is preparing for military action in Nigeria. We should use the president's exact words here. On social media he said the U.S. military would go in, quote, "guns-a-blazing." The president went onto say, quote, "if we attack, it will be fast, vicious and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our cherished Christians." As we have reported over the years on NPR, there are big Islamist militant groups in Nigeria. But the president's own envoy says they kill more Muslims than Christians in a country that is about evenly split between the two faiths. NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu is in Lagos. Hey there, Emmanuel.
EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: Hi. Good morning.
INSKEEP: What's the background here?
AKINWOTU: For years there's been this pretty dogged campaign by U.S. and international evangelical groups, who are really a key part of Trump's base. And they've been warning about what they call a Christian genocide. And the context for that is Nigeria is roughly evenly divided between Christians who are a majority in the south and Muslims who are a majority in the north. And then in the last few months, what's really ramped up is criticism by prominent figures in the U.S., like Bill Maher, criticizing protests against Israel by saying those protesters are ignoring other crises like in Sudan and in Nigeria. And what all of this leans on is the fact that it's been a pretty brutal 15-year period for Nigeria just because of rampant insecurity.
INSKEEP: OK, so there's politics here, but there's also a real story. There is insecurity in the country. Is it a campaign against Christians specifically?
AKINWOTU: Well, this is what these arguments have focused on. The curious thing is just a few days before Trump's statement, his envoy on Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos, he pretty much contradicted what Trump said.
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MASSAD BOULOS: We even know that Boko Haram and ISIS are killing more Muslims than Christians. So people are suffering from all sorts of backgrounds. This is not specifically targeted about one group or the other.
AKINWOTU: The Nigerian government have made a similar argument, saying that the data shows attacks by Islamist groups like Boko Haram and ISIS or by militant groups are actually less about religion and more about geography and where they operate. But a common response to that is that the data doesn't capture everything, and that attacks with religious aspects are sometimes flatly reported as communal clashes.
INSKEEP: I'm also listening here and realizing that if you say it's strictly Muslims against Christians, it divides the whole country. Whereas if you realize it is violence, it's something you can gather a big majority against. So what are some of the important factors here?
AKINWOTU: Exactly. You know, earlier this year, I went to a part of Nigeria that's really been a focus for these types of claims. It's a town in the breadbasket central region that's rich with farmland. The state is called Benue and it's overwhelmingly Christian. And there have been these disputes over land between Christian farmers and herders, who are largely Muslim. And these disputes have really evolved into a wave of deadly attacks against these Christian farming communities. More than half a million people have been displaced.
I went to this town where 160 people in this small village were killed, shot, burned alive and hacked to death. There were still smoking dead bodies being collected, and we saw Christian prayer books littered on the ground. We spoke to survivors, many of them who hid in the nearby Catholic Church, and then to an important traditional monarch in Benue called the tor tiv, Dr. James Ayatse.
JAMES AYATSE: If you want to kill people, then you might be interested in what they have. And we believe that it's the land. The land is rich with solid minerals, so we believe this is the reason.
AKINWOTU: Their explanation for this was that this was really about their farms. And although their Christian faith was a factor, no one mentioned their faith as an explanation for the violence.
INSKEEP: NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu in Lagos, Nigeria. Thanks as always for your reporting, really.
AKINWOTU: Thanks, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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