Blood Minerals, Fractured Narratives, And The Political Economy Of Nigeria’s Northern Violence: Beyond The Religious Genocide Thesis
Oyewole O. Sarumi | Ph.D.
Volume 6, Issue 1, April 2026
The recurring violence in Nigeria’s northern and Middle Belt states has been persistently framed by international actors as a religious conflict, specifically, as a campaign of genocidal persecution targeting the Christian minority by Islamic extremists. This framing has gained renewed traction following the Trump administration’s October 2025 redesignation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act, and the subsequent Christmas Day drone strikes on Sokoto State. This paper undertakes a systematic interrogation of that dominant narrative through a political economy and resource conflict lens, drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship, conflict event databases, legislative texts, mineral geology surveys, and primary policy records. Using the theoretical framework of resource conflict and elite capture, the paper argues that the violence is primarily driven by intersecting forces of illegal mineral extraction (lithium, tin, columbite, and tantalite), climate-induced land scarcity, governance collapse, and the deliberate political instrumentalisation of insecurity by elite actors who extract economic rents from sustained conflict. Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project, the Nigerian Mining Cadastre Office, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and multiple peer-reviewed academic sources directly contradict the religious genocide thesis. The paper argues that the CPC designation and the Sokoto airstrikes represent a strategic misdiagnosis with dangerous consequences for regional stability, and concludes with a policy framework grounded in structural rather than theological intervention logic.