Senator Ali Ndume, representing Borno South Senatorial District in the Nigerian Senate, has challenged the international narrative of a targeted Christian genocide in Nigeria during a Monday, November 3, 2025, interview with Arise News.
Senator Ndume emphasized that the country’s severe insecurity is an indiscriminate crisis, asserting that the pervasive violence claims the lives of both Muslims and Christians equally, contradicting foreign claims that focus solely on the persecution of Christians.
To illustrate the complexity beyond the religious framework, the Senator emphasized the current violence in the South-East region, which is predominantly Christian.
He emphatically stated that these killings are not the work of Jihadists, as is often implied by international bodies.
Instead, Ndume attributed the violence to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), stressing that the group is responsible for killing fellow Christians and Igbos within that zone.
Ndume’s intention in shifting focus to the South-East was to demonstrate that the widespread killing crosses religious and ethnic lines,
The Senator also drew on harrowing firsthand examples from his own Borno State, a stronghold of the Boko Haram insurgency, to substantiate his argument that Muslims are also targets of terrorist depravity.
Ndume recounted the murder of his local Emir, a Muslim, who was killed by Boko Haram while on a condolence visit.
He detailed a devastating incident where 75 Muslim elders, who were studying the Quran, were abducted and systematically executed.
Also, he noted the killing of a Sheikh and twenty of his students, all Muslims over the age of sixty.
Ndume said, “In my own village in Borno State, our Emir was killed by Boko Haram on the street when he was going for a condolence visit to Gombe for the Emir of Gombe that died. In my own local government, elders that were reading the Quran, seventy-five of them, were taken to the slaughterhouse by Boko Haram, and they were slaughtered one after the other. Only one person escaped because the blood of others covered him and he fainted, so they thought he was dead.”
He added, “Close to my father’s house, there is one Sheikh that had twenty of his students slaughtered by Boko Haram, and they were all Muslims, and none of them were less than sixty years old. Look at the killings in the South-East, it is not by the jihadists; it is by IPOB. And they are killing Christians and Igbos.”
Ndume’s forceful counter-narrative comes at a peak of diplomatic tension.
Only days earlier, the United States officially redesignated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for allegedly engaging in or tolerating particularly severe violations of religious freedom.
The US designation was followed by an escalation from President Donald Trump, who explicitly threatened to cut off all US aid and warned of potential military intervention if the Nigerian government failed to immediately halt the killings of Christians.
Ndume’s statement serves as a direct rebuttal to U.S. government assessment, insisting that any international intervention must recognize the comprehensive nature of the security crisis affecting all Nigerian citizens.
The lawmaker demanded for a strong and unified response from the federal government that acknowledges the multifaceted nature of the violence.
The Nigerian government, he concluded, must take drastic steps to curb the security crisis affecting all citizens.
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