A Full Statement Of Fact!
…I am just thankful that we were able to get this done; it is profoundly important. One other point: when I was first invited on this mission, I asked, “What is expected of me?” The message I received in response was simple: “Just tell the truth.” And so, that is what I am here to do. It has not been an easy task. I told my host that I would probably lose some friends today. I know this is a very contentious and divisive issue, with strong feelings on all sides. I appreciate the freedom of the assignment, but it carries a heavy weight.
Truth, what is truth? It is an accurate assertion of reality. It is an accurate picture of what is real. That is what truth is. And truth is the only thing, ultimately, that is sustainable. It is the only foundation that can truly bring us together. If any side has built an argument or advanced a narrative not firmly grounded in truth, it simply cannot last. Therefore, I have been exceedingly careful and precise ever since I received the invitation. I have dedicated myself to this almost full-time, researching late into the night, speaking with experts, and investing considerable time. My sources include a retired US Ambassador friend, a longtime international human rights attorney, journalists, and others.
The truth is paramount. I cannot claim that anyone, including myself, can present a perfect, 100% unassailable truth. But what I will share is the very best I could assemble, well-validated, backed by documentation, and thoroughly supported. I can also guarantee this: it will probably make everyone on every side a little uncomfortable. I would ask you to bear with me to the conclusion, because that is what is most important.
I believe there have been misunderstandings, misconceptions, miscommunications, and agendas on all sides of this issue. I have attempted to cast those aside and focus solely on the facts. So if anyone feels uncomfortable, please stay with me. The process is equally uncomfortable for me, as truth often is. But it should be a good discomfort, the kind that guides us all toward a more grounded understanding of reality.
I have typed up my formal remarks and have copies for the journalists. It is a formal statement on the widespread violence and displacement in Nigeria. One of the contributors listed is U.S. Ambassador Lewis Luck, with whom I spent considerable time. He has done a great deal of work in this field. He was an Ambassador to Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), the lead official in charge of rebuilding Iraq after the war, the principal in charge of rebuilding Haiti after the earthquake, and a former board member of the World Food Program. This is a man of stature who has put his name on this report.
Other experts value their privacy in this age of social media, but if any journalist wishes to dig deeper, I would be happy to make personal connections with my sources. If you do not take me at my word, I encourage you to do your own digging. Do not ever take anyone’s word for anything as final.
Specifically, and with no offence intended, if you read it in the Nigerian newspapers, be aware that there are oftentimes twists and turns that do not line up with reality. Do your own homework. Conduct your own research. Search your own soul. Always seek the truth, for that is what is sustainable, and that is what always wins. The truth always wins.
I am going to begin by reading my statement directly, as it is important to be precise. As I mentioned, the text is verbatim from the document that will be distributed and which will also be posted online for everyone to read. I am choosing to read it because I do not want to make any mistakes or deviate from the prepared remarks.
Purpose and Credentials.
My name is Mike Arnold. I recently served as the elected Mayor of the City of Blanco, Texas. I first visited Nigeria in 2010 as a board member of Unity for Africa. Since then, I have made 15 trips to this nation, including six extended investigative missions since 2019. I co-founded Africa Arise International and Africa Arise USA in 2019 alongside my covenant brother, Pastor Jedde Grace. My work has been frequently quoted in top newspapers and television news broadcasts here in Nigeria, and a couple of our videos have gone viral.
I have never extracted anything from Nigeria; I have never taken anything home but souvenirs and small gifts. My closest and most trusted friends are native Nigerians. I come only to give, to serve, and to stand with the people and the nation I dearly love as my second home.
I was personally invited here today by Reno Omokri. I received an unexpected call from him last Sunday morning, while he was on the line with the National Security Advisor, inviting me on this fact-finding trip and to deliver this report. The sole written charge given to me was simply to meet certain key people and then declare the truth. I know what is at stake, and I take this responsibility with the utmost seriousness.
While my plane ticket and accommodations have been paid for, I have not asked for, been offered, or received any other compensation or promise of compensation for this work. I am under no duress. I have been given complete freedom. I am not connected to or compensated by the U.S. government in any way; I am not reporting for them, speaking for them, or advocating any specific policy. That is not my role here. I am here independently, and this statement is made without coercion or inducement of any kind.
I will also note that numerous top U.S. officials have been briefed and are personally aware of my presence here, the purpose of my trip, and my specific itinerary and expected return date. At their request, I am providing them with updates on my status. These officials include, but are not limited to, a Senator from my home state of Texas, Ted Cruz, and Congressman Chip Roy, as well as contacts within the White House, the U.S. State Department, the acting ambassador, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from The New York Times and their international editor. A great many people are awaiting this report.
Please also note that as I present this statement, it is being simultaneously distributed to these awaiting parties and posted online for public access. This statement is my formal account and analysis of facts, findings, and firsthand documentation regarding the widespread claims of violence, displacement, and atrocity crimes in Nigeria, claims that these acts are primarily directed against Christian populations in the North and Middle Belt, and claims regarding whether this violence rises to the level of genocide.
Let me just pause there. This is heavy. This is serious. It is not something for word games. This report is addressed to journalists, international observers, human rights bodies, and policymakers in the United States and abroad. We have travelled to cities, villages, and remote encampments from Bokkos, Jos, and Gwoza to Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Akwa Ibom, and Makoko. I have been all over this nation in the last six years. I have interviewed governors, cabinet ministers, traditional rulers, two former presidents of Hausa extraction, and many others.
I have met orphans whose parents were hacked to death before their eyes. I have helped build schools in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. I have documented over 80 hours of filmed testimony and evidence at great personal risk, which will soon be released in our documentary film, Me and Ms Hatutu. My findings carry the weight of direct personal experience.
Nigeria in 2010: A Nation at Peace.
In 2010, Nigeria was a beacon of rising prosperity and religious tolerance. It was often cited as the only country where radical Islam was being effectively pushed back. Terrorist attacks were rare and sparked national outrage. The number of recognised IDPs was effectively zero, with only minimal displacement from localised communal conflicts. This stands in stark contrast to the crisis that followed, a crisis marked by a staggering 1200% surge in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) the very next year, in 2011, following Boko Haram’s violent escalation. The prior absence of such a displacement crisis is both verifiable and damning.
Today, an accurate count is impossible because I have personally stood in schools within camps that governments around the world, including the Nigerian government, officially deny exist. Therefore, the commonly quoted figures of three to four million IDPs are clearly underestimates. I have heard numbers as high as nine million. What has changed since then?
By 2014, Nigeria’s stability was shattered. Foreign meddling, including direct U.S. involvement, played a pivotal role in the 2015 election, enabling a regime change that ultimately emboldened actors who ignored or enabled extremist violence. I have received high-placed eyewitness testimony confirming this interference, with firms like Cambridge Analytica further skewing the political landscape. Simultaneously, radical jihadist elements, fueled by an influx of foreign fighters from Libya and the Sahel in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring, flooded into Nigeria. Many of these actors have stated they were “invited, not invaded” at that stage. Their arrival amplified the threat of Boko Haram and ISWAP.
Today, over four million Nigerians are displaced, a deliberately conservative estimate based in part on my own work in hidden camps and on officials who labour to officially re-label these IDPs as “criminals” or “vagrants.” I must pause here to make a crucial point, one that is very clear to Nigerians. Two years ago, we broke ground for a school in an IDP camp, and several journalists covered the event. My remarks, and the entire purpose of our organisation, is to build schools in IDP camps. Yet, the news reports stated we built schools in “rural communities,” surgically removing the entire concept of IDPs from the story.
If truth is the only path to unity, and if truth is the only sustainable foundation, then the Nigerian media, at least in my experience, has failed profoundly. I do not know what justifies changing my words to sterilise reality, but if you work for a paper and are guilty of this, you are not a journalist; you are a propagandist. For shame. Your job is to speak the truth. Nigeria cannot heal, advance, or succeed if its people rely on your words for understanding and you are lying to them. I apologise for the detour, but this is reality. This is too important. Do not change my words.
The vast majority of these IDPs are Christians driven from their homes by deliberate political engineering and radical conquest. While mostly Muslim IDP camps do exist, one of our schools serves an entirely Muslim population of several hundred children; the pattern of displacement is unmistakable. Since 2019, our team has conducted relentless frontline research at great personal risk. We have interviewed survivors across multiple states, operated schools in two IDP camps for both Christians and Muslims, with a third under construction, serving a present total of 550 students. We provide free, high-quality education, and in doing so, we hear their stories and their parents’ stories firsthand, as eyewitnesses.
We have filmed camps that the UN and the Nigerian government deny exist. I can take you to them. We have recorded numerous IDP testimonials on our YouTube channel, My Voice Matters. In late 2024, my team visited and filmed in Goshe, in Gwoza LGA, Borno State. A once-thriving Christian farming community is now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Recent attacks in 2025 confirm the ongoing devastation, with surviving Christians now confined to military zones to avoid abduction or execution.
An aside: I was able to visit, and our team connected with a small church congregation within that protected zone. Not long afterwards, we were sent a Boko Haram video showing members of that very church being decapitated with dull axes. Those were our friends. Our syndicated story exposes a reality ignored by officials. Many people from Gwoza have been refugees in Cameroon for over a decade, abandoned by Nigeria, while those who returned languish in the FCT, their homelands occupied by Boko Haram as the seat of its caliphate for years.
Across regions and years, we have documented a chilling and consistent pattern: churches destroyed, Christian homes torched, and jihadists resettled on captured lands, while authorities deny or excuse the attacks. While some Muslims who resist extremism are also targeted, absolutely, peaceful Muslims are targeted; the overwhelming evidence is undeniable. With thousands of churches razed and the violence so clearly selective, the evidence leads to only one conclusion: this is a faith-based genocide against Christians and those who reject radicalism.
This is what some claim. But what truly drives this violence? From the highest-level testimony and the deepest research, three primary, calculated drivers emerge; this is not chaos, but a coordinated campaign.
A. First, Radical Islamic Conquest.
Armed groups, bolstered by foreign fighters from Libya and the Sahel in the wake of the Arab Spring, seek to impose an extremist ideology. They operate with local enablers and political protection, in a strategy described by eyewitnesses as nothing less than jihad by occupation.
B. Second, Blood Mineral Extraction.
I was guided toward this truth by a former President of Nigeria. According to official government estimates, which in my humble opinion are profoundly conservative, Nigeria loses $9 billion annually to the illicit mining of gold, tin, and lithium. Time and again, communities are wiped out, and if you return shortly after, you find the land scarred by mounds of dirt from strip-mining. Of that $9 billion, a significant portion, estimated at least 10%, is funding the very violence and corruption that enables this destruction. That is $900 million a year fueling this terror. This demands immediate and thorough investigation. We have documented heavy machinery and foreign buyers appearing mere days after displacements, exploiting the lands of the violently displaced.
C. Third, Political Realignment.
In some cases, this is more war than politics. Local Government Areas have been overrun, electoral districts redrawn by force, and militants resettled on conquered lands. Documented cases exist where fighters are each given four abducted wives to deliberately skew demographics and dismantle communities deemed politically inconvenient. This is not speculation; it is fully documented and should be beyond debate.
I must address a critical euphemism: the term “farmer-herder clashes.” While such conflicts have occurred for generations, this phrase is now, in many instances, a cynical doublespeak. It weaponises historical land disputes to mask a modern reality of jihadist conquest. For centuries, herders and farmers coexisted, with disputes rarely turning lethal. Today, villages are systematically razed, churches levelled, and tens of thousands are dead. This is systematic terror, not a grazing conflict. To call it otherwise is a lie akin to labelling the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia a “neighbourhood spat.”
These targeted, deadly attacks are the same, whether the perpetrators are labelled as herders, bandits, or insurgents. The puppets may change, but the same malevolent forces pull the strings. A jihadi by any other name is just as deadly. Mincing words over labels is an intentional obfuscation.
While global attention focuses on Boko Haram and ISWAP, the majority of killings and displacements across the Middle Belt are, in fact, carried out by radical Islamist Fulani ethnic militias. Numerous field reports, satellite imagery, and survivor testimonies confirm that these militant groups, often operating under political protection and mislabeled as herders, are responsible for the most widespread, systematic, and sustained attacks on Christian farming communities. Their campaigns of organised massacre, forced displacement, and strategic land occupation extend far beyond traditional disputes. Today, these militias represent the single most lethal terrorist threat to Nigeria’s stability, surpassing Boko Haram and ISWAP combined in their reach, frequency, and civilian death toll.
This brings me to the crime of obfuscation. I have personally seen ongoing efforts by officials and their loyal media to bury the truth, sanitising massacres as “conflict,” labelling displaced survivors as “vagrants” and “criminals,” and refusing to name the perpetrators. This is not confusion; it is complicity. To play semantic games while people die is obscene. There can be no solution while leaders use word games to hide the truth.
So, let us come to the conclusion, for this is where it matters most. The question before us is whether this meets the legal definition of genocide. It is not a vague concept, and we must not treat it as such. I did not start with this conclusion; I arrived at it through the evidence. Per Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), genocide includes acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. This includes:
* Killing members of the group.
* Causing serious bodily or mental harm.
* Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.
* Imposing measures intended to prevent births.
* Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The evidence before us is undeniable: targeted killings, mass displacement, the destruction of homes and churches, and the systematic annihilation of Christian identity.
Therefore, it is my conclusion and my formal finding, as an objective expert eyewitness, a longtime friend and traveller throughout Nigeria with access at the highest levels, based on more than five years of investigation, field interviews, firsthand documentation, and deep consultation with top scholars, statesmen, and legal experts, that I declare without any shadow of a doubt:
The campaign of violence and displacement in the Northern and Middle Belt of Nigeria constitutes a calculated, current, and long-running genocide against Christian communities and other religious minorities. To continue to deny this is to be complicit in these atrocities. I say this not in anger, but in truth and grief. My stated assignment was to speak the truth, and I have done so to the best of my ability. I believe Nigeria has a bright future. I believe in Christian love and solemn harmony. I believe the good people of every tribe, faith, and party must stand against this evil. But first, we must name it. Here I stand; I can do no other. So help me, God!
By Mayor Mike Arnold, Oct 14, 2025, FCT, Abuja, Nigeria.
Disclaimer:
The opinions and views expressed in this write-up are entirely those of the Writer(s). They do not reflect the opinions and views of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or any of its employees. The designations employed in this publication and the presentation of materials herein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of the Publisher (Nze Ikay Media) or its employees concerning the legal status of any country, its authority, area, or territory or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers. Equally, the sketches, images, pictures, and videos are obtained from the public domain.
