In the midst of competition for clicks and media attention, narratives often harden long before evidence does. Headlines offer quick explanations: terrorism is spreading, banditry is out of control, religious persecution is escalating, the state has lost control. Each of these claims may contain elements of truth. However, making such sweeping claims without sufficient evidence creates a new set of problems. Once a certain narrative has taken root among policymakers, journalists, advocates, or faith communities, it begins to shape how violence is interpreted, explained, and responded to.
The current situation in Nigeria is a vivid illustration of this challenge. Nigeria has been receiving considerable attention due to the Trump administration designating it as a Country of Particular Concern, as well as its recent bombings in Sokoto state. We commented on Nigeria in our previous Substack post.
Some analysts emphasize jihadist expansion and ideological insurgency as the main problems in Nigeria. Others insist that insecurity is fundamentally criminal, driven by banditry, kidnapping, and illicit economies. Still others focus on the vulnerability of religious communities and the reality of targeted attacks on Christians and other minorities. These frames are often treated as mutually exclusive, rather than overlapping and interdependent.
When advocacy relies on partial data, selective incidents, or assumed motives, it risks reinforcing misunderstanding. When policy responses are built on simplified stories, they tend to address symptoms rather than causes.
This is why rigorous, transparent research matters. Careful fieldwork, conservative incident coding, and methodological transparency are essential tools for navigating complex environments where identity, ideology, criminality, and governance failures intersect.
In this post, I describe the highlights of a recently published IIRF report and another well-researched article produced by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). Both studies illustrate the complexity of the situation in Nigeria. They also support the IIRF’s belief that reliable research is foundational for credible advocacy, responsible policy, and meaningful protection of vulnerable communities.
IIRF Analytical Intelligence Report: Nigerian Christians as Victims of Islamist Extremism
This report opens by clarifying the conceptual landscape of violence in Nigeria, cautioning against simplistic labels and emphasizing multiple contributing factors of banditry, Islamist insurgency, and communal conflict. It situates Nigeria within a wider Salafi-Islamist environment, mapping pressure points across its borders: the Lake Chad Basin (ISWAP and Boko Haram remnants), the Sahel corridor via Niger and Burkina Faso (JNIM and Katiba Macina), and emerging vectors through Benin and the Gulf of Guinea. Subsequent sections detail how Islamist groups are financed—notably through kidnapping for ransom, cattle taxation, smuggling, and quasi-state zakat systems—and outline leadership structures linking Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ansaru, and Sahelian actors.
The report also examines the wider nexus of relations among Gulf countries, arguing that while there is no formal state sponsorship, multiple avenues contribute to funding the humanitarian crisis. Exporting of ideology, private donations, charitable networks, ransom mediation, and permissive financial environments have indirectly enabled extremist ecosystems.
The second half of the report centers on evidence of the suffering of Christians in Nigeria, marshaling corroboration from UN, US, EU, and international human-rights organizations. It documents systematic patterns of violence: massacres of Christian villages, targeted killings and kidnappings of clergy, sexual violence and forced Islamization, widespread church destruction, and attacks timed to Christian holy days such as Christmas and Easter. Using conservative statistical estimates, the report highlights thousands of deaths annually in peak years and millions displaced, while noting underreporting due to insecurity and rural inaccessibility. The concluding sections emphasize the importance of international recognition of the crisis and argue that the evidence demonstrates a coherent pattern of identity-based persecution intertwined with broader security failures. Therefore, an effective response requires coordinated counterterrorism, civilian protection, governance reform, and international engagement.
Kachallas and Kinship: Understanding Jihadi Expansion and Diffusion in Nigeria
The CTC report by Barnett and Musa argues that jihadist activity in Nigeria beyond the northeast should not be understood as a linear or unified expansion of Boko Haram–style insurgency. Instead, the authors conclude that Nigeria is experiencing a fragmented diversification of jihadist cells, shaped primarily by local social networks, leadership personalities, and opportunity structures rather than by a centralized command or ideological coherence. Groups such as the Mahmuda faction in Niger and Kwara states, jihadist-linked figures operating in Kogi, and emerging cells along forested border zones operate with limited manpower, weak coordination, and ambiguous affiliation to larger global movements. Recruitment is shown to rely less on formal jihadist doctrine and more on pre-existing religious circles, kinship ties, and local grievances, some of which long predate contemporary insurgency. The report cautions against treating banditry and jihadism as either fully merged or entirely separate phenomena, emphasizing instead a conditional relationship in which jihadists seek areas of moderate insecurity—violent enough to weaken state control but not dominated by powerful bandit commanders who would resist ideological encroachment.
A second core argument concerns the strategic implications of misdiagnosis. Barnett and Musa stress that conflating all rural violence with jihadist expansion risks obscuring both the limits and the dangers of these emerging networks. While current jihadist cells outside the northeast remain militarily constrained, their ability to embed themselves within local communities, exploit security vacuums, and selectively present themselves as protectors or moral authorities poses a long-term risk. This will be especially true if links to Sahelian groups deepen. The authors highlight warning indicators such as cross-border mobility, ideological branding of criminal actors, and the gradual normalization of jihadist presence in non-traditional areas. At the same time, they argue that alarmist narratives overstate jihadist capacity and can provoke counterproductive responses that strengthen militant recruitment.
The report calls for evidence-driven, locally grounded assessments that distinguish between criminal violence, communal conflict, and ideological militancy, warning that policy built on oversimplified narratives will fail to contain Nigeria’s evolving security challenges.
Why the IIRF Violent Incidents Database Matters
Taken together, these reports point to a central lesson: how we know matters as much as what we say. In an environment saturated with competing narratives, the temptation is to reach for simplified explanations that confirm prior assumptions. It is important to state limits of our data and to differentiate between arguments that are supported by clear evidence and those that are not.
As IIRF International Director Dennis Petri has recently argued, we frequently do not know hidden or overlapping motivations behind religious freedom violations. Nevertheless, acknowledging that motives are often opaque need not limit analysis or advocacy for those who suffer.
At the IIRF, we consciously resist oversimplification. Our research products are grounded in methodological caution, comparative analysis, and a commitment to evidence, even when the findings are uncomfortable or resist easy framing. By situating religious freedom violations within wider political, security, and social dynamics, the IIRF provides a platform for analysis that is analytically serious and policy-relevant.
Our Violent Incidents Database (VID) operationalizes this approach in concrete form. Rather than treating data as a rhetorical tool, the VID treats it as a discipline: incidents are recorded conservatively, motives are not inferred without evidence, and uncertainty is made explicit rather than concealed. In this way, the VID can strengthen the credibility of religious freedom advocacy.
In situations where trust is easily lost and hard to recover, the IIRF and the VID attempt to model a different path. Careful research, transparent limits, and intellectual humility should be the foundation for effective protection of vulnerable communities.