01/12/2025
Bishop Kukah, With All Due Respect, This Is Not It
By
Sa'adiyyah Adebisi Hassan
When a man of God opens his mouth in a bleeding country, people expect comfort, clarity, and courage. Not cold statistics that sound like they were drafted in a government PR office.
Bishop Matthew Kukah allegedly said:
“There’s no genocide or persecution of Christians in Nigeria. You can kill 10 million people and it still won’t amount to genocide…If you are a Christian in Nigeria and you say you are persecuted, my question is: how? At least 80% of educated Nigerians are Christians, and up to 85% of the Nigerian economy is controlled by Christians. With such figures, how can anyone say Christians are being persecuted?”
Let’s dismantle this
1. Genocide Is Not Cancelled Because Some Christians Are Rich
Genocide is not defined by:
who controls the banks,
who owns the malls,
who fills private schools, or
who dominates the “educated elite”.
Genocide and persecution are defined by targeted violence, patterns of attack, state failure or complicity, and systematic oppression of a group in specific regions.
You can have:
wealthy Jews in Europe pre-WWII - and still have the Holocaust.
prosperous Tutsis in Rwanda - and still have genocide.
influential Armenians in the Ottoman Empire - and still have genocide.
Wealth and education among a fraction of a group do NOT erase persecution against the vulnerable segment of that same group.
So even if 80% of “educated Nigerians” are Christians (a very questionable statistic), that does not erase:
Christians in Southern Kaduna being slaughtered in their sleep.
Christian villages in Plateau and Benue being repeatedly attacked, burnt, and depopulated.
Pastors and priests being abducted and executed on the highway or inside churches.
Entire local governments where Christian communities are pushed off ancestral lands by violence and never return.
If rich Christians in Lagos own banks but poor Christians in Plateau are being buried in mass graves, you cannot use one to silence the suffering of the other. That’s not theology. That’s intellectual dishonesty.
2. “You Can Kill 10 Million And It Still Won’t Be Genocide” - Read That Again
A bishop, a supposed shepherd of souls, allegedly said: “You can kill 10 million people and it still won’t amount to genocide.”
Even if he meant it in a technical, legal sense, that line reveals a dangerous numbness.
People are not statistics. They are fathers, mothers, children, worshippers, farmers, students.
2 people killed = a tragedy.
10 people killed = a massacre.
Thousands killed over a decade, often targeted by identity = a pattern.
To start arguing “what number qualifies for genocide” while Christians and Muslims alike are being butchered is not pastoral wisdom. It is moral detachment.
Even if a lawyer wants to debate the word genocide, a shepherd of the flock should be more worried about the blood than the terminology.
3. Persecution Is Not Only When Every Christian Everywhere Is Under Attack
You say Christians are not persecuted because:
“Christians control 85% of the economy”
“Most educated Nigerians are Christians”
Let’s assume your numbers are even remotely true.
Persecution does not mean every single member of a group is poor, hunted, and powerless.
It means:
In specific regions,
Over a long period,
People are being attacked or discriminated against because of their identity or belief,
And the state systemically fails to protect them.
Is a Christian in Ikoyi or Maitama persecuted the same way as a Christian farmer in Riyom, Miango, Kaura, Guma or Gwer West? No.
But the Christian farmer in Plateau whose village has been attacked four times in ten years, whose church was burnt, whose relatives were killed, whose land was grabbed, whose community never saw justice - what would you call his experience? Comfort? Prosperity? Privilege?
The fact that some Christians are privileged elites doesn’t mean other Christians are not bleeding in the margins. A bishop should know how to hold multiple truths together, not weaponize privilege to silence pain.
4. When Clerics Choose the Palace Over the People
History has receipts. There are always two kinds of clerics:
A. Those who spoke for the people and truth
Óscar Romero (El Salvador) - A Catholic archbishop who condemned state violence, defended the poor, and called out the government’s killings. He was assassinated at the altar. Today, he’s remembered as a saint and a hero of conscience.
Desmond Tutu (South Africa) - Took on apartheid, stood with the oppressed, rejected hypocrisy, and never hid behind “neutrality”. History remembers him with honour.
Martin Luther King Jr. (USA) - A pastor who confronted racism, injustice, and state brutality. Jailed, harassed, eventually assassinated. Today, he’s a global symbol of moral courage.
Patriarch Tikhon (Russia, early Soviet years) - Spoke out against Bolshevik repression and persecution of the church. Suffered for it. Remembered as a defender of faith and dignity.
Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye (Nigeria) - Former fighters in Kaduna who turned into peacemakers, calling out violence on both sides, not pretending one side’s suffering doesn’t exist.
These people didn’t hide behind “technical definitions”. They named injustice clearly and refused to gaslight victims.
B. Those who sided with power and sanitized oppression
Clerics in N**i Germany who gave theological justification to Hitler’s policies (the so-called “German Christians”). Today, they are remembered as cowards and collaborators.
Church and mosque leaders who blessed dictators and kept quiet during mass killings in Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, etc. History remembers them with shame, if it remembers them at all.
Religious leaders who justified apartheid in South Africa, claiming God ordained racial separation - they are now recorded in history as spiritual criminals.
Every time, the pattern repeats: Those who comfort the throne and ignore the graves are remembered as disgraceful footnotes. Those who confront injustice, even at personal cost, are remembered as moral giants.
A bishop has to choose: Do you want to be Romero or the palace chaplain? Tutu or the court preacher?
5. What You Should Have Said
If Bishop Kukah truly believes Christians are not facing genocide technically, he could have said:
“The violence affects Christians and Muslims, but Christians in some areas are facing targeted attacks and displacement.”
“Whether we call it ethnic cleansing, mass atrocity, or genocide, the bodies are real, and the government has failed both Christians and Muslims.”
“Christians with privilege must not mock the cries of Christians without protection.”
“Our focus should be on justice, not vocabulary.”
Instead, what came out was:
A casual dismissal of the idea of Christian persecution,
A reliance on economic statistics and elite status,
A tone that sounds more like a rebuttal of Western narratives than empathy for Nigerian victims.
You sounded more eager to refute Trump and Western voices than to comfort Nigerian Christians who have buried family members due to their religion and location.
6. Facts You Can’t Airbrush
You can disagree on the word genocide, but you cannot erase:
Systematic attacks on Christian communities in Plateau, Benue, Southern Kaduna, parts of Taraba, etc.
Repeated targeting of churches and pastors for kidnapping and ransom.
Patterns where certain communities are attacked, depopulated, lands taken, and nothing is done.
Government failure - under multiple administrations to prosecute those responsible.
If that’s not persecution, what is it?
Do we have to wait until 1 million die in one year before we’re allowed to name it?
7. The Danger of Church Elites Echoing State Talking Points
When a bishop starts talking exactly like a government spokesperson, something is broken.
“No genocide.”
“No persecution.”
“Look at how influential Christians are.”
“Look at how Christians hold the economy.”
You know who else uses those lines?
People who are desperate to prove to the world that Nigeria is fine, that everything is exaggerated, that all this talk of Christians (or Muslims) being targeted is just “propaganda”.
The result?
Victims are silenced.
Survivors are gaslit.
International attention is weakened.
Government comfort zone is expanded.
And when the next village is attacked, the same cycle repeats.
8. History Will Judge - Not by Your Grammar, But by Your Alignment
In the end, it won’t matter how beautifully a bishop spoke on TV. It will matter who he stood with.
When your name is mentioned decades from now, the question will be:
Did you stand with those whose villages were wiped out in Plateau, Southern Kaduna and Benue?
Did you stand with those kidnapped from churches and schools?
Did you stand with families who buried loved ones because the state failed and the world looked away?
Or did you stand with:
statistics,
political alignments,
and narratives designed to make power look less guilty than it is?
That’s the difference between being remembered like Óscar Romero and being remembered like a state chaplain.
Bishop Kukah, nobody is asking you to parrot foreign narratives. But we expect you, at minimum, not to insult the suffering of your own flock with:
"How are you persecuted?”
“Even if 10 million are killed it’s not genocide.”
“Christians control the economy, so how can they be persecuted?”
Christ didn’t ask the wounded man on the Jericho road, “How are you oppressed, statistically?”
He bound his wounds.
The least a bishop can do is not help the powerful rewrite the story of the oppressed.
Whether you like the word or not, the blood on the ground is real. And heaven is not impressed by clever definitions.
