Nigeria has recently found itself at a crossroads again, this time facing a more perilous framing and propaganda. Bill Maher, who runs the US media outlet Real Time, made a damning allegation on September 26, 2025, that appears to be not only ill-conceived but also contradicts the logic of people who are knowledgeable about current affairs, especially in Africa and Nigeria.
In some of the reports, Maher was reported to have claimed that “they [only God knows who?] are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria.” He was also reported to have claimed additionally that “they [only God knows who again] have killed over 100,000 Christians since 2009” and burnt 18,000 churches.
These are allegations that Nigeria as a country and Nigerians should not take for granted. My concern with these allegations is not about the numbers that were quoted but the context within which such allegations were made. Maher made this up to compare what’s happening to Christians in Nigeria with what he sees in Gaza, saying Nigeria’s situation is “so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza.”
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I believe that this propaganda is being manufactured to not only distract the country and create chaos but to fuel another religious conflict in Nigeria, one which we do not know how to overcome. I will not go into discussing figures of people who have died in various conflicts in Nigeria to prove a point but the most decent description I can give to such a narrative is an engineered narrative of falsehood.
Apart from being an attempt to fuel conflict and distract our country and the population from pressing development issues, the narrative aimed at blackmailing the Nigerian government not to supporting the Palestinian people. To compare the ‘genocide in Gaza’, which the entire world, except for a few, admits to be barbaric, is an attempt to taint the image of Nigeria.
The Nigerian people must stand and resist any attempt by any individual or the foreign media to add to their problems. Nigerians, regardless of their religion, are already battling enough with protracted Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast, banditry in the northwest, and kidnapping that is cross-cutting, which have claimed many lives and destroyed properties and businesses. To add to these problems is not only heartless but criminal at all levels of human consideration.
As a Nigerian, I am also happy that this evil died on arrival because even the Nigerian Christians that are being incited against the government and the Muslims have since identified the defects of the narrative and are dispelling such broad day lie against our country. It is also important to tell the evil doers that even when Nigerians are battling with difficulties, such have not affected their ability to think critically and respond to issues responsibly.
Fatima Kamselem is a student of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri.
