By Stephanie Shaakaa

Nigeria is bleeding. Entire communities have been wiped out. Churches have been burned with worshippers still inside. Families have been scattered across Internally Displaced Persons camps for years, raising children who have never known peace or a classroom. Yet in the middle of this national trauma, the people who control the nation’s voice, its security response, and its global narrative continue to insist that there is no Christian genocide in Nigeria. They look straight at the smoke and swear the fire does not exist.

For many Christians, this is not just violence it is genocide. It is systematic. Coordinated. Deliberate. And what makes the silence so crushing is that at many of the most powerful decision-making centers in Abuja, the individuals in charge are Muslim, including those who shape security, justice, foreign affairs, and national narrative.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a structure.

Look closely at the architecture of power today. The President is Muslim. The Vice President is Muslim. The Minister of Defence is Muslim. The Minister of State for Defence is Muslim. The National Security Adviser is Muslim. These are not decorative titles. These are the individuals who instruct the service chiefs. They approve operations. They decide which communities receive urgent protection and which ones wait for help that never arrives. They determine which attacks are condemned and which ones are described as farmer-herder clashes or isolated incidents.

The Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, has repeatedly denied that Christians are facing genocide. The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, shapes the government’s public communication. The Minister of Police Affairs, Ibrahim Gaidam, oversees the policing framework in a country plagued by violent attacks on Christian communities. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, represents Nigeria on the international stage. All of them are Muslim. Collectively they determine whether the killings of Christians in the Middle Belt are called what victims know them to be or whether they are diplomatically watered down to farmer-herder clashes.

They cannot admit to a genocide carried out by terrorists who claim the same religion. They cannot support a narrative that implicates extremist elements from their side of the divide. They will always respond with caution, denial, minimisation, or deflection.

Acknowledging this structure is not the same as saying every Muslim in government is protecting terrorists. That would be unfair, inaccurate, and dangerously simplistic. The stronger argument lies in the subtle but powerful ways identity and political caution shape state narratives. When the perpetrators of violence overwhelmingly belong to a religious identity shared with many of the officials controlling Nigeria’s security and diplomatic machinery, there will naturally be hesitation. Hesitation to use words like genocide. Hesitation to frame the atrocities as targeted. Hesitation to confront the global implications of admitting that a religious minority is being systematically wiped out in the country. The question is not are these officials deliberately shielding terrorists. A far more believable and troubling question is does this concentration of authority create a political and psychological environment where acknowledging genocide becomes inconvenient, uncomfortable, and diplomatically risky.

These are the people standing in front of the world to insist that there is no genocide. They are the ones writing diplomatic letters, addressing world leaders, engaging the media, and pushing back against international reports that have documented the systematic targeting of Christian communities over the years. They are the ones who shape the narrative that the world hears, sees, absorbs, and eventually adopts as fact.

It is not that these officials are Muslim that is the problem. Nigeria has always been a tapestry of religions and cultures. Muslims have led before and Christians have led before. The real crisis is that this particular set of leaders is unable or unwilling to call out terrorist elements within their own broader religious community. They cannot openly support a genocide narrative directed at extremists who identify as Muslim even when those extremists are clearly acting outside the teachings of Islam. And so the problem is not their faith but their reluctance to confront what their faith categorically condemns.

Look at the pattern. When a Christian extremist harms Muslims anywhere in the world, Christian leaders swiftly condemn it. They distance themselves from the ideology. They insist that murderers do not represent the faith. They do not protect killers with silence or political caution. But when terrorists operating in Nigeria massacre Christian communities, the political and diplomatic response becomes soft, vague, and evasive. Suddenly, the language becomes technical. Suddenly, the word genocide becomes forbidden.

Yet these are the same leaders who have watched hundreds of priests murdered over the last decade. They have seen entire Christian villages erased from maps. They know that thousands of schoolchildren have been kidnapped from Christian communities in the North West and North Central. The evidence is not hidden. It is on national television. It is in reports filed by Nigerian journalists. It is in the graves that now decorate Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Southern Kaduna, and other states.

But denial is easier. Denial is more convenient. Denial protects political alliances. Denial keeps religious extremists calm. Denial keeps international embarrassment away. Denial lets the world sleep while Nigerians bury their loved ones.

And then someone tries to soothe the tension with the most embarrassing line of all. You do not have to worry. The wife of the President is a pastor. As though one woman’s church attendance can disinfect the entire security architecture. As though one pastor in the Villa can outweigh the silence of institutions that refuse to confront extremists. As though Christians being slaughtered in their homes should find comfort in the fact that the First Lady knows a Bible verse.

Nigeria has never demanded a religiously biased government. What Nigerians demand is fairness. What they demand is truth. What they demand is leadership that can say without fear or calculation that terrorists are terrorists, no matter which religion they claim to represent. Leadership that can speak honestly to the global community. Leadership that does not hide behind fragile politics and convenient ambiguity.

The world sees what is happening even when our officials pretend not to. International human rights organisations have documented patterns of targeted attacks. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has repeatedly flagged Nigeria for severe violations. The United Nations has received petitions with detailed evidence. Yet the Nigerian government continues to argue that everything is under control. Everything is exaggerated. Everything is misunderstood.

The truth is simple. If the victims of these killings were majority Muslim and the perpetrators identified as Christian, Nigeria would not hear the end of it. There would be press conferences every hour. There would be emergency meetings and special broadcasts. The state would roar in righteous anger. And that is exactly what Christians are asking for. Not bias. Not revenge. Just equality in outrage. Equality in protection. Equality in truth telling.

A country cannot heal when its leaders cannot speak truth. And a nation cannot solve a problem that it refuses to name. What Nigeria needs right now is courage. Courage to acknowledge that terrorists are conducting coordinated attacks on Christian communities. Courage to stop hiding behind diplomatic niceties. Courage to defend the vulnerable without fear of religious backlash.

Until that courage appears, denial will continue to rule. And as always, Nigerians will be left burying the truth alongside the dead.

When leadership fears the truth more than it fears death, a nation buries its children twice.

When the powerful turn away from truth, the innocent pay the ultimate price.

A nation that cannot name its killers is a nation complicit in the blood of its children.

Silence in the face of slaughter is the loudest crime of all.

Stephanie Shaakaa writes from shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com