--:-- [Announcer voice]
If you are facing divorce, call Cordell & Cordell today. There's a lot on the line in divorce.
--:-- Joe Cordell: I'm Joe Cordell of Cordell & Cordell, the largest family law firm in the country, with over 35 years of helping clients navigate divorce.
--:-- Host: [Georgia Howe] If you are facing divorce, contact Cordell & Cordell today at 1-855-GET-LEGAL. That's 1-855-GET-LEGAL. CordellCordell.com.
--:-- Host: It's a crisis that's been simmering for years, but now is boiling over on the world stage. The systemic persecution and killing of Christians in Nigeria.
--:-- Host: Just this week, President Trump designated Nigeria as a country of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act.
--:-- Host: Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands and thousands of Christians are being killed.
--:-- Host: Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.
--:-- Host: I am hereby making Nigeria a country of particular concern. That's a legal definition.
--:-- Host: The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria and numerous other countries.
--:-- Host: It's not only Nigeria. It's all over.
--:-- Host: We stand ready, willing, and able to save our great Christian population around the world.
--:-- Host: This is not going to happen. The killing of Christians is not going to happen.
--:-- Host: This new designation unlocks a range of diplomatic, economic, and even military pressures on the Nigerian government.
--:-- Host: But as reports of mass graves and razed villages continues to escalate, the Nigerian government and some in the legacy media are denying that it's actually a genocide.
--:-- Host: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. And this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
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--:-- Host: Joining us now to discuss the crisis in Nigeria is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, Megan, let's start with the basics. What exactly does President Trump's CPC designation mean and why did he pull the trigger now?
--:-- Megan Basham: One of the ways that you can look at the CPC designation as a scarlet letter for countries that are tolerating or engaging in severe violations of religious freedom.
--:-- Megan Basham: So I spoke with Congressman Riley Moore, who the president has specifically tasked with conducting a probe into this issue.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he told me that the designation, essentially one of the strongest tools that the president can use in a situation like this under the International Religious Freedom Act.
--:-- Megan Basham: So when that designation gets put in place, it unlocks, and it's under the International Religious Freedom Act, it unlocks 15 different types of levers the president can use that range from sanctions on individuals and organizations to cutting off international financial institutions, support of that country, cutting off foreign aid, restricting arms sales, security assistance, military equipment, and training.
--:-- Megan Basham: Which is one that I do want to highlight. We have been providing that to Nigeria now for years and years for them to combat this Islamic terrorist organizations operating in their country.
--:-- Megan Basham: Billions of dollars worth of arms sales have gone to Nigeria and we're not seeing the results bear out.
--:-- Megan Basham: So unlocking those different levers for the president allows him to be able to ratchet up the pressure on the Nigerian government to protect these Christians from the slaughter that they're facing right now.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, as to why now, I would say, one, because this is a situation that has been escalating over the last few years.
--:-- Megan Basham: Even though we've known that it's been going on, it has become progressively worse.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then, two, I think the issue is that Nigeria continues to deny it.
--:-- Megan Basham: So what's important to know here, Georgia, is that Nigeria, which is Africa's most populated nation, is roughly split between Muslims and Christians.
--:-- Megan Basham: But Christians are something of a second-class citizen, and they have been plagued for years now by Islamic extremists like Boko Haram and ISWAP attacking them.
--:-- Megan Basham: So we're getting reports now of as many as 25 Christians killed in Nigeria in just the last four years.
--:-- Megan Basham: So that's more than any other country in the world combined.
--:-- Megan Basham: You have groups like InterSociety, which is a Nigerian human rights NGO, telling us that just over 7,000 Christians have been killed between January and August of 2025 in Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: So this makes the country the most dangerous in the world to be a Christian.
--:-- Megan Basham: And I spoke with Pastor Brad Brandon, who's the founder and CEO of Across Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: That's a ministry that works on the ground to provide help to these persecuted Christians.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he says that when we're talking about these numbers, we're likely underestimating the problem.
--:-- Megan Basham: In fact, the numbers are coming in at over 50,000 killed since 2009.
--:-- Megan Basham: The UN just recently released an estimated 350,000 people that have been killed indirectly by the instability that's caused by groups like Boko Haram and Aiswa.
--:-- Megan Basham: So absolutely, it's a culture of death, and the areas that we work in.
--:-- Megan Basham: It is very common for areas, villages to be attacked, burned, houses burned out, entire villages razed.
--:-- Megan Basham: In fact, it was just a few months ago in a community called Yalawata where 250 Christians were killed in one night.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, a few days before Trump made this official announcement, he also posted about it on Truth Social.
--:-- Megan Basham: And I actually want to read this verbatim because it's quite something.
--:-- Megan Basham: So he said, if the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria and may very well go into that now disgraced country, guns a-blazing, that's a direct quote, to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.
--:-- Megan Basham: I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action.
--:-- Megan Basham: If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our cherished Christians, warning the Nigerian government better move fast.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, that last part in all caps. So not mincing any words.
--:-- Megan Basham: And I think it's worth emphasizing that the first Trump administration also took this action on Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: But when the Biden administration came in, they reversed it.
--:-- Megan Basham: They argued that, well, there is violence against Christians in Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: They didn't necessarily believe that it was religiously motivated, and so it was not religious persecution.
--:-- Megan Basham: And so that's also the narrative that you're tending to see from a lot of legacy media outlets.
--:-- Megan Basham: So what this feels like to me is that the president is using his bully pulpit to, in essence, push back on that denial.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, I do want to talk about that denial that we've seen from some of the legacy media, the AP, the BBC in particular.
--:-- Megan Basham: Why are they downplaying or trying to change the narrative around this when there's a lot of evidence that it's happening?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, I think the main thing is that a lot of them are not on the ground.
--:-- Megan Basham: And so they are relying on official statements and reports from the Nigerian government.
--:-- Megan Basham: And the Nigerian government continues to deny that this is an issue.
--:-- Megan Basham: So they say that, yes, there is Muslim-led violence.
--:-- Megan Basham: Everybody agrees that that's happening.
--:-- Megan Basham: But they're questioning whether it's religiously motivated because leaders like the Nigerian Information Minister Mohamed Idris have said that such claims are misinformed and politically motivated.
--:-- Megan Basham: And instead, they're blaming things like farmland disputes or pressures arising from climate change.
--:-- Megan Basham: But U.S. leaders like Ted Cruz have had some pretty sharp words about that.
--:-- Megan Basham: The AP is behaving, that reporter is behaving like most leftists, which is the violence, the atrocities of radical Islamic terrorists are of no concern to them.
--:-- Megan Basham: And even worse, if the victims are Christians, then the AP has no interest whatsoever in covering it because they don't like Christians, they don't like Jews, they don't like capitalists, they don't like Americans.
--:-- Megan Basham: And that's how we get something like Comrade Mondami in New York City.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, Pastor Brandon, of course, has had a front-row seat to what's actually happening on the ground in Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he doesn't deny that these land disputes with Muslim tribesmen known as the Fulani are happening.
--:-- Megan Basham: But he said that those conflicts don't erase the religious violence that is also happening and that no one is denying is occurring.
--:-- Megan Basham: And even when you read that AP reporting, Georgia, they are saying that part of the reason that Muslims are being the recipients of this violence is because they're not Muslim enough for the extremists.
--:-- Megan Basham: So in any case, it's still clear that religion is a motivation here.
--:-- Megan Basham: And Pastor Brandon, who is on the ground in Nigeria frequently and has seen what's happening up close, says that, yes, he doesn't deny that some of these disputes are over land.
--:-- Megan Basham: But that doesn't change the fact that this religious persecution is also happening, and he doesn't hesitate to call it a genocide.
--:-- Megan Basham: So there is a fair amount of Muslim violence, but it's disproportionate when you look at the Muslim violence.
--:-- Megan Basham: Certainly Christians are being targeted all throughout northern Nigeria, specifically.
--:-- Megan Basham: And in northern Nigeria, let not forget Christians are a second-class citizen.
--:-- Megan Basham: Oftentimes, they have trouble even buying food at the market or getting medical care or education for their children simply because they're Christians.
--:-- Megan Basham: And also, there's over 3.5 million people in IDP camps, internally displaced persons camps.
--:-- Megan Basham: 80% of those are Christians, and they're there because their homes and their villages have been destroyed.
--:-- Megan Basham: So to me, when somebody denies that this is a genocide or Christians are being targeted, like the AP has done recently, Al Jazeera put out something as well, and the Nigerian government, of course, is denying that also.
--:-- Megan Basham: So if it wasn't so serious and horrific, it would be laughable what they're saying.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he then added that pretty much any genocide we have seen starts out with countries trying to blame other factors.
--:-- Megan Basham: When you look back at the Holocaust, we still have Holocaust deniers to this day, denying that it ever even happened.
--:-- Megan Basham: You look at the Cambodian genocide or the Rwandan genocide.
--:-- Megan Basham: While they were happening, people were denying that it was even going on.
--:-- Megan Basham: So this is nothing new when genocides happen.
--:-- Megan Basham: There's always people who are going to try to cover it up so that they can operate under darkness.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, to go along with that, Congressman Moore told me that the ratio of Christians to non-Christians when we're looking at deaths is five to one.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he says that the Nigerian government's failure to act, even when they've had warning of pending attacks, is what's to blame here.
--:-- Megan Basham: A great example of that indifference was highlighted just a few weeks ago, where a pastor raised the red flag and said, we are in imminent danger.
--:-- Megan Basham: We are going to be attacked by the Fulanis here in the Middle Belt region.
--:-- Megan Basham: We need help.
--:-- Megan Basham: The federal government of Nigeria panned that as fake news and said, no, this is overblown.
--:-- Megan Basham: That's not going to happen.
--:-- Megan Basham: Within 24 hours, that pastor and 20 of his congregants were murdered.
--:-- Megan Basham: So they are ignoring what's going on and they're ignoring it to their own detriment because now it is on President Trump's radar and he does not make idle threats or statements about issues like this.
--:-- Megan Basham: To go along with President Trump's actions, Moore is also now pushing for a House resolution condemning the persecutions of Christians in Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: And Senator Cruz last month introduced a bill in the Senate called the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025.
--:-- Megan Basham: My bill does several things.
--:-- Megan Basham: One of the things that it would do is direct the State Department to do what President Trump just did, which is designate Nigeria as a country of particular concern.
--:-- Megan Basham: But beyond that, the bill also goes specifically to direct the State Department to impose sanctions on the local, the provincial officials that are complicit in these atrocities.
--:-- Megan Basham: That has not yet been carried out.
--:-- Megan Basham: I'm hopeful the Trump administration will do so.
--:-- Megan Basham: But it's part of the way you leverage change is that you impose the United States has enormous leverage, both diplomatic leverage and economic leverage.
--:-- Megan Basham: And there's a reason that when I began calling out Nigeria for this mass murder of Christians, you had Nigerian politicians across the spectrum in Nigeria trying to argue against it because they are very, very afraid of the United States using our leverage to force them to change.
--:-- Megan Basham: So really what we're seeing is a lot of action on this issue from various branches of government.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, is this just the U.S. or are there other nations that are joining in condemning this persecution?
--:-- Megan Basham: So that is definitely a complicated question.
--:-- Megan Basham: And the big reason for that is China.
--:-- Megan Basham: So something to stress here is that Nigeria also happens to be Africa's largest economy and its largest oil producer.
--:-- Megan Basham: So in recent years, the country has increased its economic ties with China.
--:-- Megan Basham: It has done arms deals with Beijing, for example.
--:-- Megan Basham: And the CCP has also given Nigeria investments and loans trying to solidify that relationship.
--:-- Megan Basham: So China right now is warning the U.S. not to interfere in Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: During a press conference on Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said this.
--:-- Megan Basham: China firmly supports the Nigerian government in leading its people on a development path that fits Nigeria's national realities.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Moore told me what that essentially means is that China's interests are all over Africa.
--:-- Megan Basham: So they're concerned about their trade and infrastructure deals being disrupted here.
--:-- Megan Basham: For them, the status quo is great.
--:-- Megan Basham: They don't care if there's Islamic terrorists running any of these countries.
--:-- Megan Basham: It wouldn't matter to them one bit as long as they're able to extract the rare earth minerals that they want, which they basically in other countries in Africa, DRC in particular, been running essentially slave labor camps down there to extract different rare earth minerals like lithium and things like that.
--:-- Megan Basham: So for them, they don't really care about the mass killing.
--:-- Megan Basham: They just don't want the United States involved in that because they think it infringes upon their ability to extract as many resources as humanly possible from Africa.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now that said, Moore stresses that China's actions and warnings are not going to stop the U.S. from acting.
--:-- Megan Basham: We're not going to let the Chinese dictate U.S. foreign policy to us, particularly coming from a country who has been locking up Christians in their own country, who has subjugated ethnic minorities to concentration camps, talking about the Uyghurs.
--:-- Megan Basham: We're not going to be lectured to by a country like that.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, as we talk about the EU, they have mostly been quiet here.
--:-- Megan Basham: A spokesman did say after Trump's announcement that the EU reaffirms its commitment to freedom of religion and belief.
--:-- Megan Basham: But they are maintaining that there are many factors behind the violence here.
--:-- Megan Basham: So once again, kind of picking up the Nigerian government's talking points, and they say that Islamic violence and religious faith is only one of them.
--:-- Megan Basham: We are, however, seeing some response out of the UK.
--:-- Megan Basham: So there, a couple of different members of parliament have been pushing to get more of a statement out, and they're asking for a fact-finding mission into Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: So some possible solidarity there.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, how about from Nigerian Christians themselves?
--:-- Megan Basham: Do we have any reporting from the ground from people who are actually experiencing this?
--:-- Megan Basham: And I think that's an important question, Georgia, because we are now in this era of social media starting to hear from the Nigerian Christians themselves.
--:-- Megan Basham: You're seeing videos circulating on social media of priests carrying guns because they feel that they need them in order to protect their flock from potential Islamic violence.
--:-- Megan Basham: You're also seeing pastors pleading with the United States for help.
--:-- Megan Basham: Of Christians in Nigeria and look at it today.
--:-- Megan Basham: Is there any Muslim here?
--:-- Megan Basham: United Nations, I know you're watching me.
--:-- Megan Basham: American Senate, you are watching what I'm doing.
--:-- Megan Basham: I'm saying here.
--:-- Megan Basham: Special advisor to Trump, now, please, tell Trump to save our life in Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: They are killing Christians in Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: Massacre Christians.
--:-- Megan Basham: If they're saying they kill Muslims, kill Muslims, I think.
--:-- Megan Basham: By who?
--:-- Megan Basham: By Muslims.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, Pastor Brandon tells me that part of the reason you're hearing these direct appeals to Trump and the U.S. government is because, for the most part, Western churches have not been very aware of this issue.
--:-- Megan Basham: So they haven't been very outspoken about it.
--:-- Megan Basham: That's because for the past 15 years, this has been going on, and the church in the West, and particularly the American church, has really been eerily silent on this.
--:-- Megan Basham: It's only within the last three or four months that this has floated to the top and people have started to talk about it.
--:-- Megan Basham: We've been working in northern Nigeria for 10 years, crying from the mountaintops that this has been going on and gotten very little response.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then Pastor Brandon also shared a personal story with me that really highlights the suffering and the tragedy, really, that we're seeing on the ground there in Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: Back in 2021, there were 5,191 Christians that were killed.
--:-- Megan Basham: And that number is pretty close to my heart because that one, 5,191, was a pastor friend of mine.
--:-- Megan Basham: He actually worked for our ministry for a while as a scout, getting us into areas where we could help Muslim communities and help persecuted Christians.
--:-- Megan Basham: We were doing a two-week tour through northern Nigeria, helping Christians and helping Muslim communities.
--:-- Megan Basham: And we dropped him off at his house one evening, and Muslim extremists broke into his compound.
--:-- Megan Basham: They burned his church to the ground.
--:-- Megan Basham: They burned his house to the ground, and they hacked him to death in his bed.
--:-- Megan Basham: I know that that's gruesome, but that's a reality in northern Nigeria.
--:-- Megan Basham: And his name was Pastor Shaibu, and every September is the anniversary of his death.
--:-- Megan Basham: And as an organization across Nigeria, we honor him.
--:-- Megan Basham: But I'll tell you, there's been many people who are working for us or have worked for us that have been killed.
--:-- Megan Basham: We've had friends of ours killed.
--:-- Megan Basham: We're constantly in and out of villages where hundreds of Christians have been massacred.
--:-- Megan Basham: In fact, I told you about Yalawata.
--:-- Megan Basham: That was a place where Muslims lit houses on fire and stood outside and shot women and children as they tried to escape the flames.
--:-- Megan Basham: So he expressed that he's very pleased to see the U.S. government speaking out on the issue, but he's also urging Christians in the United States to be in prayer on this.
--:-- Megan Basham: And he asks for them to consider raising their voices now and also to consider looking to ministries like his to see how they might help.
--:-- Host: Well, I know John and I felt it was important for us to cover this and we're going to continue tracking as this moves through Congress.
--:-- Host: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: My pleasure.
--:-- Host: That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
