Our Reporter, Abuja
Professor Moses Ochonu has warned that Nigeria is witnessing “parallel genocides” as deadly attacks on communities intensify across the country, accusing political leaders of exploiting the controversy around the term genocide to avoid responsibility.
Speaking Thursday as a guest alongside the Archbishop of Umuahia diocese of the Methodist Church, His Grace, Dr. Chibuzor Opoko, at the November edition of the Ikenga Virtual Townhall themed “Alleged Genocide, Trump’s Threat and the Propaganda against Ndigbo,” Ochonu said Nigerians have failed to form “a clear-cut consensus” on the scale of the violence ravaging the nation.
“It is unacceptable that communities are being sacked, people are being attacked in their ancestral villages and killed in genocidal numbers,” he said.
“Yet we are quibbling over how to describe and how to name the tragedy… It speaks to what has happened to us as Nigerians — we’ve lost our humanity and our sense of empathy.”
Ochonu argued that the ongoing killings meet the universal definition of genocide, citing elements of systematic violence, intentionality, and coordination.
“All of these elements… are present in what is going on in Nigeria. So, if you have all of these, you have genocide,” he said.
He described the genocide debate as “a dead-end” that only benefits government officials.
“The more we argue about whether there’s a genocide or not, the happier the people in government are. Because the more time we spend on that debate, the less time we spend holding them accountable.”
The scholar said both Christians and Muslims have suffered extensively from terrorist campaigns and urged Muslim communities to speak more openly about their own victimhood.
“Nothing stops Muslims from framing their own genocide in a way that gets the attention of the international community,” he said, adding that reluctance to do so stems from “embarrassment” that many attackers claim to be Muslims.
He appealed for empathy across religious lines: “The denialism — this idea that more Muslims have been killed and so there’s no Christian genocide — does not help anyone but the government. Muslims should join us in declaring what is happening a genocide.”
Ochonu also said U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent comments on Nigeria had forced Nigerian officials to scramble.
“Nigerians welcome the attention this problem has gotten as a result of Donald Trump’s intervention,” he noted.
“To see people in government now frantically traveling to Washington one day and Russia the next day, I think Nigerians welcome that.”
