By Olufemi Aduwo
In contemplating the distressing events that have, over the past decade, enveloped the Federal Republic of Nigeria, one is struck by the sheer proliferation of violence, the magnitude of human suffering, and the unrelenting erosion of national confidence. From the ravages of banditry in the North-West to the predatory phenomenon of land-related kidnappings, and from the quiet terror that stalks remote farming settlements to the orchestrated assaults on Christian communities in the Middle Belt, Nigeria appears beset by calamities so numerous and interwoven that the nation often struggles to name them coherently.
Yet in the midst of this complexity, it is of cardinal importance to distinguish between violence that, however heinous, remains within the tragic but familiar domain of criminality, and violence that belongs to the gravest category recognised by civilisation: the crime of genocide. It is here, and not merely in the tally of casualties, that one perceives the moral and legal landscape that the Nigerian state has long refused to describe with candour.
For decades, Nigerian public discourse has been hampered by the inclination to attribute every episode of bloodshed to vague or sanitised causes. We speak of “bandits,” “unknown gunmen,” “herder-farmer clashes,” and “communal disputes,” even when the facts of particular incidents transparently reflect ideological motivations, systematic targeting or deliberate attempts to extinguish particular communities. In this confusion, all killings appear alike, as though the murder of a farmer for ransom bears the same legal character as the organised destruction of a village chosen because of its religious identity.Yet such an approach is untenable, both morally and under international law. The doctrine of genocide does not rest upon the number of victims, the ferocity of the crime, or the geographical location of the atrocity; it rests upon the intent that animates the act and the identity of the group against whom the violence is directed.
It is therefore necessary, before evaluating Nigeria’s contemporary turmoil, to clarify what genocide is and what it is not. The term has too often been invoked casually in local political debates, weaponised by partisans seeking to portray themselves as victims.This trivialisation obscures the solemnity of the legal framework established by the international community in the wake of the Second World War.The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), a treaty to which Nigeria is a party, defines genocide in terms that are both precise and formidable.
Article II provides that genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
These provisions make clear that genocide is not merely mass murder; it is murder directed at a specific protected group, motivated by the desire to erase that group from existence, whether partially or entirely.
This requirement of special intent,what international jurists refer to as dolus specialis,is what separates genocide from all other forms of political or criminal killing.In the landmark case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro (2007), the International Court of Justice affirmed that genocidal intent is a distinct mental element demanding proof that the perpetrator sought the physical or biological destruction of the group.
It is not sufficient that killings occurred during war, or that they were widespread, or that the perpetrators held hostile attitudes toward the victims.The ICJ emphasised that genocide requires a specific intention to wipe out the group “as such,” not merely to defeat it militarily, displace it territorially, or punish it for perceived offences.
This doctrinal clarity allows us to examine Nigeria’s present security crises with a sober and disciplined mind. Not all killings committed within the country constitute genocide, even though they may be appalling in their brutality and devastating in their impact. Consider first the phenomenon of banditry, which has become an expanding plague upon the nation. In Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Niger, and other states of the North-West, criminal gangs abduct travellers, invade rural villages, murder farmers and extort communities through ransom and blackmail.Their motives, however reprehensible, are rooted in profit, opportunism and territorial dominance.They do not typically single out their victims because they belong to a national, ethnic, racial or religious group; they target them because they are vulnerable and potentially profitable. As such, these acts, though terroristic in nature, fall within the wide spectrum of organised criminality, not genocide.
Next, there are communal and intra-religious killings, which, tragically, have afflicted Nigeria for many decades. Whether one considers the periodic conflicts between Tiv and Jukun, Ife and Modakeke or various Christian sectarian disputes, or even the internecine disputes between Muslim factions in certain northern states, the distinguishing feature is that these are conflicts between communities that share substantial identities.A Muslim killing another Muslim or a Christian killing another Christian, or two ethnic groups contending over land, does not satisfy the legal requirement of genocide, because the acts are not committed with the intention to destroy a protected group “as such.” They are nonetheless deplorable and must be treated as grave breaches of national peace, but they do not belong to the category of genocide.
It is in a different class of violence, however, that one begins to perceive a troubling alignment with the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention. Across parts of Plateau, Benue, Southern Kaduna, Taraba, Nasarawa, kwara ,Ondo there have been numerous attacks perpetrated by Fulani militant groups, many of which operate not as traditional pastoralists seeking grazing land, but as ideological extremists animated by religious fervour.The pattern of these attacks is too consistent to be dismissed as random or economically motivated. Entire Christian villages have been selected for annihilation, often under cover of night. Pastors and priests are singled out for execution. Churches, as symbols of the group’s religious identity, are burned down. Survivors recount warnings delivered by the attackers, explicitly identifying the victims’ Christian status as the reason for the assault. In some areas, long established Christian farming communities have been entirely driven out, their lands seized or rendered uninhabitable.
Such acts bear disturbing resemblance to the conduct examined by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the Akayesu judgment of 1998, where the tribunal held that genocide may be inferred from the systematic targeting of individuals because of their membership in a protected group. The ICTR emphasised that genocidal intent can be deduced from the general context, including the scale of atrocities, the discriminatory nature of the attacks, and the destruction of cultural or religious institutions central to the group’s identity. When Christian communities are repeatedly attacked while neighbouring Muslim communities remain untouched; when the destruction is not opportunistic but directed at extinguishing the presence of a religious group in a given area; when armed assailants declare the religious identity of their victims as the justification for the slaughter; then the legal and moral foundation for describing such conduct as genocide becomes difficult to dismiss.
Despite this, the Nigerian Government has persistently refrained from recognising the genocidal component of these acts. Instead, the official rhetoric often relies on euphemisms that mask the religious targeting inherent in many of the attacks. The discourse of “herder-farmer clashes” is perhaps the most egregious of such evasions, as though the repeated burning of churches, the assassination of pastors, and the selective targeting of Christian settlements represent ordinary disputes over grazing routes. This reluctance to acknowledge the character of the violence is not merely a failure of language; it is a breach of Nigeria’s obligations under the Genocide Convention, which requires state parties to prevent and punish genocide. One cannot prevent a crime one refuses to name. Nor can one punish its perpetrators while pretending that their motives belong to the realm of mere communal misunderstanding.
The Government’s refusal to speak plainly has also created space for a parallel moral failure among certain religious leaders. It is an incontrovertible fact that the overwhelming majority of attacks fitting the genocidal pattern have been initiated by armed Fulani groups identifying themselves with Islamic ideology, however distorted their interpretation may be. Yet prominent Muslim leaders, with notable exceptions, have too often responded to these atrocities with silence, denial, or deflection. Some insist that the attacks are political inventions designed to malign Islam; others contend that the violence is mutual, thereby implying equivalence where none exists. This refusal to acknowledge the reality of the victims’ experience is deeply unworthy of moral leadership and gravely injurious to the nation’s unity. Religious leaders are custodians of conscience; when they avert their eyes from evil, they dignify it.
The shame that should accompany these crimes must begin within the communities in whose name the attackers claim to act. It is not enough to declare Islam a religion of peace while remaining silent when atrocities are committed under its banner. True leaders must denounce evil not only in general terms but in specific and concrete instances, especially when the perpetrators claim affiliation with their faith. Silence is complicity; denial is collaboration. The victims deserve more than diplomatic language-they deserve the truth spoken boldly, without calculation or equivocation.
Nigeria therefore stands at a moral and political crossroads. A nation cannot endure indefinitely when its citizens are slaughtered for their identity, and its leaders respond with half-truths. The Government must summon the courage to acknowledge that a portion of the violence ravaging the Middle Belt and other zones meets the legal criteria for genocide.To deny this is to betray the victims a second time. Likewise, Muslim leaders must confront the shame their silence has enabled. They must declare, openly and without qualification, that no faith permits the extermination of innocents, and that those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam are criminals and enemies of humanity.
If Nigeria is to recover from its present afflictions, it must begin with honesty. Honesty in naming the crimes, in recognising the victims, in acknowledging the failures of leadership, and in embracing the responsibilities imposed by international law.Only when truth is spoken at the presidential podium, in the mosques, in the churches, in the courts, and in the ancestral palaces,can justice follow and with justice, the possibility of peace.
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