Genocide in Nigeria? Wheelchairs, Wildebeests, and Christian-Muslim Tensions

David Marshall: Welcome to Wind of the Tao Podcast. Today we have a special guest, Ron Rice, a pastor at Westside Presbyterian Church in West Seattle. He's also an authority on the country of Nigeria. A lot's been going on in that largest of African countries in the last few years, which has mostly Muslims in the north and mostly Christians in the south.

Ron Rice is an old friend of my parents. Ron, could you please introduce yourself?

Ron Rice: Yes.  I'm a retired Presbyterian pastor. I'm 88 years old. I've been to Nigeria 31 times and I have a major ministry there.  I live in West Seattle.  My wife has been with me 16 times to Nigeria. I've actually traveled in 33 of Nigeria's 36 states. I have yet to meet a Nigerian who has seen as much of Nigeria as I have.

 

Wheelchairs for Nigeria

There's more polio in Nigeria than anywhere in the world. There are uncounted tens of thousands of polio survivors and basically no one is helping them. Now huge efforts have been made at polio eradication.  Rotary started this over 40 years ago. They've raised over a billion dollars from Rotary clubs around the world. Gates Foundation has given five billion.

So the good news is that the World Health Organization declared that Nigeria was polio free maybe six or seven years ago.

I have a partner (in Nigeria) who walks on his hands on wooden blocks. He's a graduate of the law faculty of the University of Joss. And we have a shop in Joss, Nigeria with 46 employees.  And we build a tricycle made of bicycle parts.  We build them for $150.

I first my met my partner 26 years ago. This started very slowly. I had a wheelchair or tricycle built for him and it's grown and grown and now we have last month we topped 40,000 of these tricycle wheelchairs that we have built and donated. No one else in that huge country. You know, Nigeria has 230 million people. It's two-thirds the population in the United States. And no one else is doing what we're doing for polio survivors. But we've just scratched the surface.

(These wheelchairs) transform lives because (the recipients) have been crawling on the ground.  Imagine if you could never get further from your house and you crawl on your hands and knees all your life. You're not going to go out in public. Nobody's going to know about you except your family and they're ashamed.  It's an honor-shame culture. And there's a lot of shame connected with having a disabled person in your family. And so mobility absolutely transforms their lives. Kids can go to school, adults can go to the market or to church or to the mosque.  And our of course our goal is that they can be self-supporting and many of them do become self-supporting.

A couple years ago we did a distribution in at an emir's palace. You know an emir is a king and traditional ruler. And here was a man on one of our wheelchairs that he had gotten 10 years before and he has a little business selling fruit. He has someone that goes into Joss and buys fruit and brings it back and he sells it and he's supporting his family.  So (for) many it absolutely changes their life.

We're a Christian organization. Our name is Beautiful Gate, taken from the book of Acts in the Bible. Peter and John going to the temple to pray at the gate called beautiful. And (they meet) a crippled beggar there.  Peter says, “Silver and gold have I none, but I'll give you what I do have. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And this man who had never walked jumped to his feet and went in temple praising God.

We tell that story wherever we go, wherever we give out wheelchairs.  We can't do what Peter did, but we're doing the next best thing by giving mobility to these who cannot walk.  Of our 46 employees, probably maybe 15 or 20 of them are Muslim.

Marshall: That reminds me of the ministry that Christian missionaries did in China when they helped uh overthrow foot-binding in the 19th century in the early 20th century.

So some of your employees are Muslim and some are Christian and your ministry is obviously to both Muslims and Christians and also anybody else who may belong to other religions as well.

Rice: It’s in the city of Joss, a city maybe about the size of Seattle, in the middle belt of the country.  It’s about half Christian half Muslim -- actually Plateau State where Joss is located is maybe 70% Christian.

Christian-Muslim Violence

Marshall:  So do you see any hostility between Muslims and Christians in a place like that or is it more confined to particular regions of Nigeria?

Rice: Oh yes yes yes we've had what they call crises. The first one was in 2001 – it started five days before 911, but had nothing to do with 911 here.  But you never know what triggers it.

On Friday afternoons the Muslims block off the main roads for parking for people going to the mosque to pray. And the story was – you never know the details – that some lady went through the parking lot or something. Anyway, it triggered hostility and and there were probably several thousand people that were killed, both Christians and Muslims.  (You know, when you talk about Christians and Muslims, these are people from Christian tribes or Muslim tribes. It doesn't mean when you say they're Christian that they all go to church, although many do.)

There have been several other crises that were triggered by who knows what and there were maybe several thousand killed.  That doesn't really have anything to do with the current killing across the country.

Our old shop which we started in 2004 was in a Christian area on a back road, very hard to find. And after one of these crises, some of the ladies came from the community to tell my partner Yuba, you better not allow any of your Muslim workers to come through the neighborhood because it won't be safe for them. You know, back then, I mean, it was awful. They'd stop a motorcycle – and back in those days the taxis in town were motorcycles. They don't have those anymore in Joss – they have the three-wheeled jimny from India.

But the motorcycle would be going through the wrong part of town and a gang of young guys would stop the motorcycle and find out if the if the passenger was a Christian or Muslim and if they were in the wrong area, maybe they'd make them quote the Lord's Prayer or something to find out, but they tell them to pull out your phone and call your family and tell them that they won't be seeing you anymore and they kill them right there on the spot. And so there has been that that kind of killing.

But that's been quite a while I think since we've had a crisis like that, at least 10 years.

Marshall: In a large country with 230 million, people, you've got three kinds of interreligious violence.  You've got this sort of community upwelling of violence and you've got the Fulani herders who are in conflict with the farmers and then you have the – what's the name of that terrorist organization up in the north?

Rice: Boko Haram.

Marshall: They've also split into different groups as well  . . .

Rice: Let me talk about those three groups.

Boko Haram started in the northeast maybe 15, 20 years ago.  Boko means “book” and they're trying to reestablish the Islamic caliphate and destroy all western education. Most high schools in Nigeria are boarding schools. the government would try to send have families send students from the southwest or the southeast to a school in the north and vice versa to try to break down tribal animosities. and Boko Haram would come to a school in the night, a boarding school, high school, and they would light fire to the boy’s hostel and shoot all the boys as they came out and then they'd go to the girls’ dormitories and bring the girls out and tell them to go home and get married.

Well, you didn't have to do that more than a few times and no families were ever going to send their students to a boarding school in the north.

And the estimates now that I've gotten from my colleague, Professor Danny McCain at the University of Joss, who heads up their Peace Department. So, he's really on top of things. The latest research is that the Boko Haram has killed between 300,000 and 350,000: 60% Muslim, 40% Christian. Of course, remember they're in the north and the north is mostly Muslim. So when they're going into villages and killing school kids or whatever the majority of the victims are going to be Muslim certainly killed plenty of Christian

Marshall: From what I understand Boko Haram has split into different factions and is fighting itself nowadays.

Rice: Probably.  You know some have lined up with ISIS uh up in the Middle East and the army has killed thousands.  The army of course they don't make very good soldiers. They come in and shoot them up when they can’t capture them. They don't mostly they don't take prisoners and of course a lot of soldiers have been killed by Boko Haram. They're ambushed and Boko Ram has a lot of weapons from up north and so it has been very tragic.

Marshall: So that sounds a little bit more complicated than what we usually hear about Nigeria.

Rice: It's all very complicated.

So the next group would be the bandits. This is in the Northwest. And from the news we get there's no religious connotation.

Marshall: I've heard that they shout Allahu Akbar when they attack. 

Rice:  These would be Muslim bandits attacking Muslim villages

A lot of Ibos from the south and people in the southeast and southwest are predominantly Christian. They're much more entrepreneurial than in the north, more educated.  So during that period (20 years ago) there were many Ibos that came to set up little shops and do business. And there was one main street in Joss that had a whole bunch of Ibo shops. And of course when this crisis started, the army moved in within a day or so.  But a gang of young Muslim men –  probably not educated. you know, very devout Muslim families don't send their kids to school, or send them to a school run by an emir who may have 50 boys and can't feed them. They're out begging on the streets.

Anyway, they were they were attacking these some of these shops uh shouting Allah Akbar, God is great. And the army, they had a machine gun set up there and they just mowed them down. And the these Muslim young guys thought they were bulletproof. And you never know. Of course the government and the army buried these bodies very quickly and they never reported any details (because that would) just escalate retaliation back and forth.

Marshall: But what is the government's position on all this? They just trying to calm everything down or they take a definite side for one side or the other?

Rice: Yeah, let me come to that. Let me talk first about the Fulani.

The Fulani are nomadic cattle herders.  There are 30 to 40 million Fulani in west Africa, probably fifteen to twenty million in Nigeria. They have a lot of cows. They have big families. They have multiple wives. And in the past there wasn't really such a big problem. And I should add that the farmers have traditionally no fences. We have never seen a fence around a farm in Nigeria. And so as the population has grown, as the desert has moved south, there's less and less pasture for the cows. And so the conflict as the as the cows invade a farmer's field, of course he's going to get angry and maybe shoot a cow and then the Fulani are going to way over retaliate.

They've probably got AK-47s from payments from kidnapping and they come in and shoot up the village and houses. 

Marshall: Of the 10 or 15 million or so Fulani in Nigeria, how many do you think are participating in these sorts of activities?

Rice: I have no idea, but it would be it would be a small minority and it would be regional.

I'm on the board of Phyllis Sortor Schools for Africa. She's a tremendous missionary in Nigeria. She was Seattle Pacific Alumni of the Year a couple years ago.  An amazing lady – she has 20 Christian schools for Fulani children.  Up in Niger state where the bandits came, nobody knows kidnapped these 300 students just a week or so ago from a Catholic school in Niger state.  Phyllis has six primary schools and one new high school for Fulani children in a huge grazing reserve where thousands of Fulani live. They are very peaceful and uh but now she's had to shut down her schools there and also in couple other states. The governor of Niger state has closed all schools because of this kidnapping.

Why did they pick a Catholic school? Well, probably they figured that these families that could for afford to send their student to a private school would have more money than families that sent their students to a public school. And of course, I'm sure this is all for ransom. Anyway, that's what's currently in the news.

My guess is that those are the bandits. I don't know that Boko Haram has been operating that far west in Nigeria. It could be but if it were Boko Haram, the girls would probably be forced into marrying

Marshall:  The notion that some people have been bantering around in the US is that this is a sort of genocide against Christians. Obviously you don't see it as something so simple as that.

Rice: No. I I have here in front of me an article (from) my colleague Danny McCain. This is written by a Muslim and his figures (show that) in Benway State, which is just south of Plateau State where we're located, probably 90% Christian, some sources suggested as many as 2,000 villages have been sacked over the years, Zamfara State in the far north, 95% Muslim and there's been 481 villages sacked.  The April report noted 100 deserted villages and 300,000 displaced people. Those would be 95% Muslim. Plateau State is 70% Christian. That's where we're located. Armed herders have sacked at least 43 villages between 2018  and 2023. Then Katina state again in the far north probably 95% Muslim (according to a) 2024 report, 200 villages and towns were destroyed.

So you can see it's a mixed it's a mixed deal.  Some states that are predominantly Christian farmers have been heavily attacked by the Fulani, but up in the north it's Muslim villages that have been.

Marshall: But the state that you mentioned that had 2,000 villages was a mostly Christian state though so (Christians) would still probably constitute the bulk of the number (of victims).  But you don't really think there's a very large religious component to that. They're just out for either vengeance or for, like you said, sacking. They're trying to get some money, take people hostage and things like that.

Rice: Well no, they're after land for their cows.  People in that village and in surrounding areas are going to flee in fear to a refugee camp and so now the Fulani have pasture for their cows. You know this was a problem in the United States in the west what 150 years ago something like that between herders and farmers.

Marshall:  “Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.” Like that musical from Oklahoma?

Rice: Yeah. And historians have said that the solution to that problem was the invention of barbed wire.

Marshall: Even if you go back to ancient Sumer or China this dynamic between settled farming peoples and the nomadic herders . . .  the Mongolians too, who conquered China. This has been going on since the dawn of time.

Rice:  When the Fulani come and shoot up a village and burn the houses. If it's a Christian village, they're going to burn the church. They may seek out the pastor. Not because necessarily he's a Christian pastor, maybe, but maybe because he's a leader of the village. He's highly respected. And so in these reports here in the US when they talk about burning churches, maybe many of those have been when they've burned a village.

Marshall: So, your colleague, the woman who has started schools for Fulani children, I guess she's hoping that (her work) will help the Fulani adjust and allow the two cultures to live side by side.  It sounds like things are not really going that well, though.  Is there hope?   Is there a solution to this problem besides barbed wire?

Rice: Let me back up and say that she learned some years maybe 15 years ago about a scientist in Zimbabwe.  The conventional wisdom is that as the desert moves south desertification occurs because of over-grazing.  But this scientist has said, “No!  Let us look at the big national park in the north of Tanzania and Marara Park in Kenya the Masara park.  You’ve all seen on TV the migration of the wildebeest.  Thousands of of wildebeest. And as they cross the rivers, the crocs are having a a big feast."

What you find in these two national parks that straddle a country border is that the wildebeests are chewing up the ground and fertilizing it. And then as the rains move, they're moving around following the rains in a big circle. And eventually when they come back, of course, now the grass is growing great because it's been fertilized and been plowed by their hooves.

And so what he what he proposed was what's called rotational grazing. You take a big plot of ground. You put a deep well in the center. You divide it up into separate paddocks and you move the cows around so that by the time they come around in the course of a year, the grass is growing and there's good pasture.

And so she has gotten the governor of Niger State and a couple other states to (donate) a great big piece of land. And they dug or drilled several deep wells and as I say there are tens of thousands of Fulani there. She's established six primary schools and now a new high school, and a number of clinics.  She's had some of the women in the village trained as health workers and employs both Muslims and Christians teachers. They have to be very well qualified and pass the national teaching certificate.

And part of the solution is giving land to the Fulanis so that they have pastures for their cows and of course the schools. She tries to establish these schools so that some of the farmer kids can go to school with the Fulani and build friendships.

Marshall:  So what role does the government play in all of this?

Rice:  Let me back up and say the previous president was a Fulani himself. There are royal Fulani and then you have nomadic herders who are not educated. Kids don't go to school. They're sent out to watch over the cows.  The former president was Fulani himself and probably at least half of the army are Fulani. So there's some suspicion that the government was going easy on the Fulani.  I doubt that.  Maybe the soldiers in in the local barracks.

The current president is a Muslim and he talks a good game and called a national emergency recently and is trying to get the army to try to track down these militant Fulanis. Sometimes they attack during the day, but lots of times at night.  Poor villagers, you don't call 911 and the and the authorities are going to come quickly. No, the army is in their barrack barracks. It may be 20 miles away and the Fulani out-gun them anyway.  And by the time the army would ever come, they're probably afraid of being ambushed.  There's a lot of incompetence.

My colleague Dr. McCain attributes a lot of this to the incompetence of the authorities of the army and so on. 

Marshall: So how should Christians in America look at this? Is there anything that we can do or how should we think about this?  Many Christians are concerned about these brothers and sisters who are being killed in one way or the other by militants or Boko Haram or by Fulani raiders.  How should we see this?

Rice: Well, I think number one is to pray.  Christians have been killed down through the centuries and partly I think (we need) to understand the complexity of the situation.  Nigeria is very concerned about (their country’s) reputation.  If you were a Nigerian American – there are many doctors and professionals (here) – they understand that it's more complex and that it is not a genocide.

Marshall: On the ground level, you mentioned however that it's getting dangerous. What was the name of your friend who runs the schools, the lady from SPU?

Rice: Her name is Phyllis Sortor.  A marvelous lady.  Her website is Phyllis Sortor Schools for Africa.  I'm on her board and a few years ago we split the cost of an armored vehicle, a 2006 Lexus SUV that we would both use. She also has a second vehicle, an extended cab pickup. She employs two policemen full-time. They ride in the passenger seat of the two vehicles with their gun between their knees and their rifle, and they don't fasten their seat belt. They need to be ready to go.

Two years ago in October we linked up with Phyllis and their security team and we did eight or nine big distributions. We gave out I think almost a thousand wheelchairs in these distributions.

Kidnapping now is a risk for me why I can't go back.  The kidnapping isn't in the cities. It's out on the lonely highways and it's strictly commercial. And if they ever caught an American, it'd be a huge ransom. And my colleague wrote to me a couple years ago when we were considering coming and he said, "Well, you might be able to survive in the bush for a week or a month or however long it would take uh your friends in the US to raise your ransom. But think about your wife.  You wouldn't have your medications, maybe not your glasses. You'd be barefoot probably. And they'd be moving you around the bush.”

So to be kidnapped there is a risk and several missionaries have been kidnapped. They've all been released.  But nobody knows how many thousands of dollars were paid in for their ransom.  That's why after 31 trips I can't go anymore.

Although we have wonderful people running our Beautiful Gate workshop and in November they had I think already built 3,700 wheelchairs this year. They're on schedule to build 4,000 wheelchairs in 2025.

My big job is raising money. I've got to raise about $25,000 a month in order to maintain our production.

Marshall: And how are you doing? 

Rice; Well, we've been doing quite well except the last few months. I don't know why, but donations have been going down quite drastically.

Marshall: Okay, I'll put a link up to your organization so people can look into that.  

Aside from that, on a personal level, you’ve taken your wheelchairs into Muslim villages as well as Christian villages. So, it seems like there must be on a ground level, there's often some good relationships between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria as well. We're talk concentrating on the on the negative side, but there's must be some positive relations as well.

Rice: Absolutely. You know, you know, I was turbaned as a chief by a Muslim tribe.  That's the highest honor they can give. And they gave me this beautiful black robe with all this gold embroidery. And then of course a turban, which is a a fabric about 25 ft long.  The protocol is that I have to wear my chief road my turban and so yes we've had wonderful and many times when we have done distributions in Muslim areas the local leader or the local imam or the leader of the community maybe the government leader will praise us and say, “Look at what these Christians are doing for us and we don't do anything for them.”   And just go on and on. So, it's been quite a witness and we've never had an issue of bad relationships with the Muslims.