For years, Nigeria’s spiralling violence, especially in the Middle Belt, has been framed almost exclusively through the lens of religion. Recent assessments by the U.S. Congress amplify this perspective, presenting the crisis as a campaign of Christian persecution. While this interpretation captures part of the truth, it fails to grasp the deeper, more decisive forces driving the violence.
Religion is present.
Religion is weaponised.
Religion shapes the language of terror.
But religion is not the engine of this crisis.
Behind the scenes lies a far more complex reality: a billion-dollar criminal enterprise centred on mineral extraction, political complicity, and geopolitical opportunism. Until this is understood, Nigeria will continue fighting shadows while the true perpetrators operate with impunity.
THE SOUTH VS THE NORTH: A REVEALING CONTRAST
Before accepting any claim of a nationwide religious war, a few simple questions must be asked:
How many villages have these armed groups attempted to sack in Southern Nigeria?
How many churches have they burned down in the South?
Beyond isolated incidents of banditry, kidnapping, and clashes over farmland, what organised campaign of territorial destruction have they carried out in the South?
The answer is clear: none comparable to the scale witnessed in the North and Middle Belt.
This alone exposes a critical point: the violence is not uniformly religious across the country. Something else is shaping the geography of terror.
FOLLOW THE MINERALS, AND YOU FIND THE VIOLENCE
Now turn to the Middle Belt, North East, and North West, regions where Nigeria’s largest deposits of:
gold,
lithium,
cobalt,
columbite,
tantalite,
uranium, and
rare earth minerals
are concentrated.
Suddenly, a chilling pattern emerges:
the violence follows the minerals, not the religious map.
Across these mineral-rich territories, we observe:
Entire villages sacked.
Communities burned to ashes.
Mass displacement into IDP camps.
Farmlands abandoned.
Territories left uninhabited.
Populations uprooted permanently.
This type of systematic depopulation does not occur in southern Nigeria because the South does not sit on strategic mineral belts required by global industries.
Let us examine specific hotspots:
Zamfara:
Over 3,000 killed and 500 villages displaced by 2019 alone, right in Nigeria’s richest gold belt.
Niger State:
Bandits now occupy lands containing lithium and gold veins. Entire communities have fled.
Birnin Gwari (Kaduna):
A zone with abundant gold, long plagued by relentless attacks.
Plateau:
The heart of the columbite and tantalite belt; over two decades of village burnings and mass killings.
Southern Kaduna:
Gold-rich, agriculturally strategic, hundreds of villages emptied.
The North East:
Insurgents embedded in areas with uranium and rare earth minerals.
These are not random coincidences.
They reflect a coherent pattern of resource driven territorial clearance.
RELIGION: THE MASK, NOT THE MOTIVE
To be clear:
Yes, religious extremists operate in Nigeria.
Yes, jihadist rhetoric motivates some fighters.
Yes, Christians in the Middle Belt have suffered greatly.
But this is where nuance is essential.
In the Middle Belt, where communities are predominantly Christian, the violence appears religious because the contractors used for displacement, often Fulani militias, carry religious and ethnic identities. They are hired precisely because their presence generates fear and justifies mass flight.
Yet in the predominantly Muslim North West, Muslims are also violently displaced, with entire Muslim villages wiped out. The motive is not theology; it is territorial acquisition for illegal mining.
In the religiously mixed North East, Boko Haram has killed more Muslims than Christians, because their aim is dominance over territory and resources, not a religious census.
This proves a critical point:
When the identity of victims changes but the outcome remains the same, depopulation of mineral-bearing land, the motive cannot be religious. It is economic.
THE REAL ARCHITECTS OF THE VIOLENCE
Behind the scenes lies a structured criminal network of:
illicit mining cartels,
powerful political licence holders,
local collaborators,
foreign mineral buyers,
corrupt elements of the security sector,
international smuggling chains.
These actors benefit from:
chaos,
displacement,
ungoverned spaces,
breakdown of oversight,
unrestricted access to minerals.
Religion is simply the smokescreen that makes their operations look like ideological warfare rather than organised crime.
HOW MISDIAGNOSIS ENABLES THE CRIMINAL NEXUS
Framing the crisis as “religious persecution” alone has unintended consequences:
It hides the economic motives.
It shields high-level sponsors.
It misdirects military strategy.
It prevents international actors from targeting financial networks.
It weakens public understanding of the true threat.
The result?
The criminals win.
THE U.S. ROLE: NECESSARY, BUT INFORMED INTERVENTION
I fully support U.S. involvement in helping Nigeria dismantle these criminal structures.
But America must operate with accurate intelligence, not a distorted religious narrative.
Nigeria is not just fighting terrorists.
Nigeria is confronting:
mineral barons,
political elites,
foreign interests,
transnational gangs,
smuggling syndicates,
corrupt security insiders.
To defeat them, the U.S. and Nigeria must jointly:
1. Identify and expose sponsors.
2. Freeze their assets and financial networks.
3. Revoke mining licences linked to violence.
4. Shut down export corridors and smuggling channels.
5. Publicly blacklist foreign buyers.
6. Then move militarily to eliminate the armed groups.
Once financiers are neutralised, the fighters lose oxygen.
ULTIMATELY: NIGERIA IS AT THE EDGE OF A HISTORIC DECISION
Nigeria stands at a crossroads.
We either cling to a simplified religious narrative or confront the complex, uncomfortable truth.
Yes, Christian communities have been brutally targeted.
Yes, extremist ideology exists.
But the crisis is not primarily religious.
It is a war for minerals, territory, and geopolitical influence, disguised as religious conflict to deceive Nigerian citizens and international observers.
To save Nigeria, we must name the real enemy:
a criminal, political, mineral nexus hiding behind the mask of religion.
Only then can the right policies, partnerships, and interventions bring lasting peace.
By Hon. Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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