Arnold made the statement during a formal presentation at the Abuja Hilton on Tuesday, where he released his investigative findings gathered over six years of fieldwork across Nigeria. The statement, titled “Formal Statement on Widespread Violence and Displacement in Nigeria,” was presented alongside contributions from former U.S. Ambassador Lewis Lucke, Pastor Jed D’Grace, and filmmaker Judd Saul.
The former mayor of Blanco, Texas, said his conclusion followed multiple investigative missions to Nigeria since 2019, during which he and his team visited displaced persons’ camps, interviewed survivors, and documented more than 80 hours of testimony and evidence. He claimed that attacks on Christian communities in the North and Middle Belt regions were part of a deliberate campaign of religious and political violence.
Arnold, who said he was invited to Nigeria by National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu and political activist Reno Omokri, emphasised that his trip was undertaken independently, without any financial or political ties to the U.S. government.
“The campaign of violence and displacement in northern and Middle Belt Nigeria does indeed constitute a calculated, current, and long-running genocide against Christian communities and other religious minorities,” he declared. “To continue to deny this is to be complicit in these atrocities.”
He alleged that radical Islamist groups, including fighters from Libya and the Sahel, had entered Nigeria since 2011 and were being protected by political interests. According to him, Christian villages have been systematically destroyed while mosques remain untouched, and displaced persons are often labeled as “criminals” or “vagrants” by officials.
Arnold also linked the violence to what he described as “blood mineral extraction,” claiming that illicit mining of gold, tin, and lithium — worth an estimated $9 billion annually — was fueling corruption and funding militant activity in affected regions.
He criticised the term “farmer-herder clashes” as a “cynical euphemism” used to downplay the scale of targeted killings, arguing that the violence had evolved into organised ethnic and religious cleansing.
