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Culture

Freedom of Belief

Migration

11 November 2024

7 min read

From Nigeria’s killing fields to Europe’s shores, the data behind the domino effect

While Nigeria thrives, some left-behind are desperate to escape.

Chris Wadibia

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development.

A data map shows circles of varying size across a map of Nigeria

Fatal attacks map.

ORFA.

Just as every coin has two sides, every soul contains the equal capacity for good and evil. Just like affairs of the soul, migration has the ability to strengthen or weaken societies.

Nigeria, the Giant of Africa, has one of the world’s largest and most professionally distinguished diasporas. Over 17 million Nigerians live in other countries. The most famous members of the Nigerian diaspora, figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Anthony Joshua, John Boyega, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Wally Adeyemo, have achieved stardom thanks to talents that impact or entertain millions of people globally.

However, these famous figures merely represent the glorious one percent of the Nigerian diaspora. Their success can easily distract observers from the grim reality of why so many Nigerians desperately seek to leave a country known for producing world changers.

Seeking data on violence

In October 2019, researchers at the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa started a project exploring the nature and impacts of of religious violence in Nigeria. The project spanned four years and generated many significant findings. Terror groups in Nigeria killed 31,000 civilians in 7,000 attacks in just four years, the Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) accounting for 39 per cent of these killings (a figure dwarfing the killings perpetrated by ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates), So called “land-based community attacks,” a concept referring to instances when actors like FEM invade small Christian farming settlements to kill, rape, and abduct Christians and burn their homes, accounted for 82 per cent of civilian killings in the study, Christian death tolls far exceeding Muslim death tolls (2.7 Christians killed for every 1 Muslim killed) in the reporting period, and 6.5 times as many Christian murders compared to Muslim murders relative to average state populations.

The methodology of the study set out to find data on all the people, regardless of their religion, negatively affected by terrorist violence. However, with every new batch of data collected, disturbing patterns emerged. Since the 2009 birth of the infamous Boko Haram insurgency, global media coverage of the terrorist violence has consistently argued Muslims rather than Christians disproportionately bear the brunt of this Islamist extremist violence. The findings of the study suggest otherwise.

ORFA data map of fatal attacks across Nigeria.

Source: ORFA.

Shouldn’t the government do something?

Historically, Nigerian governments have been reticent, even reluctant, to condemn violence in the north associated with the Fulani ethnic group. Former presidents like Muhammadu Buhari, a member of the Fulani, have even gone as far as to dismiss the issue of Fulani ethnic violence as just “cattle rustling.” However, in Nigeria, mere “cattle rustling” to some is a seriously grave situation for others.

Findings by the Observatory researchers suggest Nigerian security operatives, most of whom belong to the Fulani and Hausa ethnic groups, have a suspiciously selective way of engaging with terrorist violence in northern Nigeria, often leaving Christians distinctively vulnerable. Roman Catholics in Nigeria have even accused Nigeria's military of being a jihadist force. Churches in northern Nigeria live in a constant state of terror and acutely distressing fear.

In Nigeria, the federal government alone, led by the president, has the final say on matters concerning security and the army. Incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has notably appointed far more Christians to senior government offices than his predecessor, Buhari. The Nigerian government is famously opaque. Despite its nominally democratic visage, family dynasties and networks continue to dominate political life and business affairs.

Understanding the religious geography and reaction

Religion in Nigeria is divided along geographical lines. The northern half is dominated by conservative Islam. Catholicism and Anglicanism reign supreme in the southeast. The southwest functions as a geographical melting pot of Islam (albeit a more secular variety compared to the north) and Christianity (especially Pentecostalism). The north contains a surprisingly large number of Pentecostals. Many Pentecostal pastors and choirs in the north have been kidnapped by the mercilessly violent Islamist extremists.

The overwhelming majority of Christians in Nigeria live in the southern half of the country. However, in a Nigeria which has suffered from one oppressive government after another for decades (most of these led by conservative Islamic military and civilian presidents), most Christians struggle to survive and lack the energy to speak up for their northern kin. Despite their weariness, the Southern Nigerian Church (the collective population of Christians living in the south) has a sacred responsibility to awaken and demand greater protections from the federal government and the military for Christians living in the north.

Local causes, global effect

Over the last two decades, commentators have routinely pointed to climate change as the primary factor facilitating violent encounters between Muslims and Christians. Fulani cattle herders, guided by the desire for better grazing lands for their livestock, have often encroached on land owned by Christian farmers in the north and middle regions. The findings by researchers at the Observatory suggest significantly more is going on to facilitate these violent clashes than just climate change. Ascribing the challenge of religious violence in Nigeria to just climate change provides a get-out-of-jail free card to the men of violence linked to the orchestrated killings of Christians.

Ethno-religious violence has quietly become commonplace in northern Nigerian life. The single solution capable of curbing this violence is unprecedented, cross-party, interethnic, and interreligious security reform. Strength of security affects every person in Nigeria. From the richest to the poorest, no one is immune from a sudden kidnapping, suicide bomb, or violent act of banditry negatively changing their life forever.

Nigeria's neighbours in Europe cannot afford to continue slumbering and must wake up. Readers in Europe feeling insulated from the violence the data records are just as susceptible to the shockwaves that a collapse of the Nigerian state as other West African neighbours. Such an event would imperil the security of citizens in countries like Italy, Spain, and Greece just as much as it would people living in Mali, Chad, and Cameroon.

Nigeria has never been nearer to a civil war or state collapse since the Biafra War of the late 1960s. Ethno-religious violence disproportionately targeting northern Christians is one of the greatest and most overlooked factors contributing to Nigeria's dysfunctionality. In an unprecedentedly connected world, such a collapse would, in turn, trigger further collapses. The European Union (EU) does not grasp the severity of how such a collapse would affect its own security and stability. At a time when every day brings news of small boats carrying migrants to European shores, Nigeria's collapse would trigger one of the greatest avalanches of mass migration in modern African history.

A modern Middle Passage

Nigeria has a population of over 235 million, the largest in Africa and sixth largest globally. If just 10 per cent of the population attempted to flee in the event of another civil war or a destabilising political event, that is 23 million Nigerians desperately fleeing into any country they reason might welcome them. Many of these millions would gamble by voyaging on the tempestuous Atlantic Ocean in small boats with the goal of beginning new lives in European countries. Some would inevitably perish in what might evolve into this century's Middle Passage. Nigeria’s collapse would destroy the EU by overwhelming its borders and social services. The average population of an EU country is just under 17 million, or the size of Nigeria's diaspora. The unprecedented connectedness of our world means catastrophic destabilisation in one country can have significant consequences for the stability of other countries globally. The EU has a geopolitical responsibility to invest in improving Nigeria's security situation. Abductions, killings, and displacements in Nigeria might trigger instability in Europe and beyond.

However, the collapse of Nigeria would not only destabilise the EU. ISIS affiliates like ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) have a strategic interest in Nigeria's collapse, because it would open the door for them to expand their control throughout West Africa.

A team of researchers guided by the goal of better understanding terrorist violence in Nigeria simply followed the breadcrumbs of organically emergent data to show why the broader world should take seriously violence against Christians in the Giant of Africa. Living in an unprecedentedly connected world comes with new privileges and new responsibilities. To simply indulge in these new privileges without standing strong and shouldering these new responsibilities would be foolish, selfish, and nearsighted.

English poet John Donne once famously wrote,

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,  of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
Every man is a piece.

The “old self” understanding of global connectedness, ruled by selfishness and ignorance, must give way to the “new self” model of prosperity and security via proactive collaboration. For every one Okonjo-Iweala, Boyega, or Antetokounmpo, millions of Nigerians suffering from the effects of a rapidly destabilising state dream of emigrating abroad. Global Christianity and global security stakeholders each have an interest in a stable Nigeria. A stable Nigeria functions as a wellspring of human capital for the benefit of the entire world.

Donne, in the same poem, wrote,

Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

The world is involved in Nigeria and Nigeria is involved in the world. The death of Nigeria would pave the way for the death of the EU. The bell tolls for the EU community to awaken from decades of neglectfully overlooking its interests in a stable and secure Nigeria.

Further resources

ORFA report summary.
ORFA full report.
'No Road Home', a data study on those living in displaced persons camps. Download the study (PDF).

Review

Culture

Film & TV

Language

Music

14 November 2025

6 min read

The Phoenician Scheme - opening the mind to wider horizons

Wes Anderson's new film widens our vision to a bigger world

Oliver Wright

Oliver is a Junior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford, writing and speaking about theology and AI.

Characters from a Wes Anderson film sit in a stylish plane interior.

Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton star.

Wes Anderson’s latest film – The Phoenician Scheme – has caused as much confusion amongst critics and viewers as it has the usual delight. It tells the story of Anatole – Zsa-Zsa – Korda, his mad-cap business scheme across an imagined near-Eastern world, and his growing relationship with his daughter (apparently), Liesl, a novitiate nun. There are the usual Anderson-ian tropes and characters, with superb cameos by Tom Hanks, Richard Ayoade, and Benedict Cumberbatch (worth watching in itself), and a real star turn for the young Liesl, Mia Threapleton.

I first watched it on a transatlantic flight (viewer advisory: there are several scenes in rickety planes). I was hooked from the first moment. Why? Not just the usual Anderson style and panache and dead-pan weird story and acting. It was the music. Anderson himself first trained as a musician. It shouldn’t be a surprise that amidst the rest of Anderson’s meticulously designed and curated world the music should carry so much meaning.

The opening scene (no spoiler, it’s in the trailer), involves the burning wreckage of a plane (viewer advisory). There are birds – crows, hovering. And from the wreckage, bloodied but unbowed, emerges Korda. We hear from a voiceover that this is by no means the first assassination attempt he has survived. It won’t be his last. But the music at this precise point? It is a dark and brooding short melodic fragment. Does this portray a dark and brooding – evil, even – presence in the main character? Indeed, this dark melodic fragment follows Korda around the whole film, a leitmotif.

But far from it. And this is what delighted me and hooked me. Because this isn’t just any old dark and brooding melodic fragment. It is the opening notes of Stravinsky’s magnificent ballet score, his first hit for the Russian impresario in Paris, Diaghilev and his ‘Ballets Russes’, The Firebird. Now here’s the fun thing. If you know the ballet, you know that it is the magic of the firebird’s feather which brings new life out of death in the ballet’s wonderful conclusion. And that is because the Firebird story itself is based on another mythical bird-creature – the phoenix (remember the title of the movie). The mythical phoenix is a bird which cyclically dies in flames, only to be reborn from the ashes to new life. So immediately, even though all we can see is the burnt-out wreckage of a plane, what we might think to ourselves if we know our Stravinsky, is that perhaps what this melodic fragment signifies, far from a brooding menacing presence, is someone who is constantly going to reemerge from the ashes to new life. In fact, I immediately felt I would be surprised if that wouldn’t happen. Korda himself says at a certain point ‘I won’t die, I never do’. Just from a musical fragment, the whole story can be seen in one glimpse.

There are two other Stravinsky ballets which Anderson skilfully deploys (although less intrusively than the Firebird theme): the joyous whirligig of the opening of Petrushka, and the searing epilogue of the ballet Apollo. Now the Petrushka music does seem to be associated with another character, just like Firebird is associated with Korda. In the movie, Petrushka appears in two moments of significance for Liesl, (apparently) Korda’s daughter, the novitiate nun (and therefore herself already intimately associated with music – The Sound of Music). But the telling thing here is that, unlike Firebird, Petrushka (the ballet) doesn’t end well for its eponymous puppet-hero. Petrushka is killed by another puppet, with only a fleeting appearance at the end as a ghost. So the music of the ballet of Petrushka, despite the excerpt we hear being full of joyousness and innocent youthful energy, and its association with Liesl, suggests that her journey in the film is going to go in a very different direction to the convent of her initial intentions. Once again, knowing the music and the whole pattern of it can foretell an entire history that will unfold, even just from a mere fragment.

Now the next thing that is so fascinating here is the combination of Stravinsky and Wes Anderson. Stravinsky wrote several ballet scores for the ‘Ballet Russes’ and Diaghilev in the glamour of Paris of the 1920s and 1930s (amongst other famous ones are The Rite of Spring (which caused a riot), Orpheus, and Pulcinella). They are highly stylised pieces, often returning to Classical ideas and tropes (musically, as well as in theme), presenting stylised and formal dances, tableaux. And whilst all these descriptions could be applied to Anderson’s films, The Phoenician Scheme itself presents a series of quirkily introduced tableaux, with their own distinctive characters and settings. And, in the concluding scene, set in a theatre, all the characters are present all at once. A miniature mechanical device representing all of Korda’s business interests appears on a stage. And the music at that point? The opening movement of Pictures at an Exhibition (by Mussorgsky, a Russian composer from the generation before Stravinsky), music which presents its own series of musical tableaux. Artistic tableau, musical tableau, ballet, and now film presented as a series of tableaux all coming together in Anderson’s fertile imagination.

But there is one last thing that is fascinating for us in this presentation of music and art and film and plot. There is a much earlier precursor for the technique I referred to above, of one musical fragment potentially carrying with it the implication and meaning of the whole work. That earlier precursor for this technique is found in the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament, especially Paul, were saturated in the texts which we now call the Old Testament, or what they thought of as their Scriptures (just as, we might say, Anderson is clearly saturated in Stravinsky). Scholars think the New Testament writers assumed a familiarity with those Scriptures in the hearers and readers of their new writings, or, alternatively, they were helping their hearers and readers newly think and imagine along the lines set out in the Scriptures. Time and again, as Richard Hays masterfully showed (in Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, and Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels), the authors resort to a technique called metalepsis. That is, in quoting or near quoting a few words or a phrase from their Scriptures, not only are the hearers/readers meant to understand that it is a quotation, but to import the sense of the entire passage or even book from which that miniature quotation emerges. It was Richard Hays’s groundbreaking work on this literary hermeneutical aspect which caused a sensation in New Testament studies in the 1980s and 1990s when it first emerged, because it opened up whole new lines of interpretation, without any question remaining about their veracity. What it means is that, as we read the New Testament, we have constantly to be aware of what Scriptures the writer had in mind, either consciously or semi-consciously, in order to allow that thought-world to permeate our reading. It is a reminder, whatever we are reading or watching or listening to, never to be too reductive about our own cultural horizons when we approach such a text, but to be listening and open and willing to be enlarged by the life-world of the text before us, as the great philosopher Paul Ricoeur used to say.

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