Terrorists killed 12 Christians in Kwande Local Government Area, Benue State, on or around March 5. Two days later, an American missionary pointed a camera at himself and told Nigeria’s governor of Benue State exactly what he thought of the response. That video is now circulating widely and it has landed in the middle of a fierce, long-running argument about what is actually happening to Christian farming communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.
Alex Barbir, founder of the nonprofit Building Zion, posted the video on March 6. He addressed Governor Hyacinth Alia directly, accusing him of denying that Christians in Benue face a targeted religious genocide and of failing to deploy adequate security forces to protect communities that have been repeatedly attacked. Barbir’s organisation rebuilds homes destroyed in attacks work that has brought him into repeated, direct contact with survivors in the state. Before that, he was a college football kicker in the United States. He is not a journalist or a politician. He is a man who has watched communities be destroyed and rebuilt, and destroyed again.
Among the 12 people killed in Kwande on March 5 were members of farming households in a predominantly Christian community. Their names have not been released by Benue State authorities at the time of publication. Building Zion has said it is in contact with survivors in the area. Africentra has not independently verified the specific circumstances of each death.
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Barbir’s video did not hedge. He accused Alia of actively downplaying the religious dimension of attacks that have, over years, killed thousands of predominantly Christian farmers across Benue and neighbouring states. He said the governor’s failure to name what is happening and to deploy enough security to stop it amounts to complicity in the conditions that allow these killings to continue. He called it genocide.
“You cannot keep watching your people be slaughtered and call it a criminal matter. These families deserve a governor who will name what is happening to them.”
Alex Barbir, Building Zion, March 6, 2026
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That is a serious allegation to make against an elected official. It is also one that a growing number of Christian advocacy groups, international observers, and conflict researchers have made in various forms about the Nigerian state’s response to violence in the Middle Belt. The charge is not that Alia is ordering killings. It is that he and successive Nigerian governments have consistently framed mass violence against farming communities in ways that avoid political and legal accountability.
Governor Alia did not ignore the killings. He publicly condemned what he called a barbaric attack and directed security forces to pursue and apprehend those responsible. He also pointed to recent security deployments in Benue as evidence that his administration is taking the threat seriously.
But Alia rejected the genocide label. His position consistent with the official line of the Nigerian federal government is that the violence is driven by criminal herders and bandits, not by religious or ethnic targeting. He views the killings as a law-enforcement problem, not a genocide.
Barbir says this is a religious genocide. Alia says it is criminality. Those are not just different words they carry different legal, political, and moral weight. Genocide requires proof of intent to destroy a group as such. Criminal violence, even systematic criminal violence, does not. The label matters for how Nigeria is judged internationally, for whether federal intervention is required, and for whether those responsible can eventually face accountability beyond local prosecution.
What independent evidence shows is this: Benue State has experienced repeated, large-scale attacks on Christian farming communities over more than a decade. The perpetrators are predominantly Fulani herders, many of them armed. The pattern of attacks targeting villages, burning homes, killing civilians has been documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Crisis Group, among others. Whether that pattern constitutes genocide under international law is contested. That it constitutes a severe, ongoing security failure by the Nigerian state is not.
Alia’s security deployments, which he cites as evidence of action, have not stopped the killings. Twelve people died in Kwande on March 5. That is the most current data point available, and it does not support the conclusion that the situation is under control.
Building Zion has been operating in Benue long enough to see the cycle repeat. An attack happens. Officials condemn it. Security forces are deployed. The displaced return or try to. Then another attack happens. Barbir’s frustration expressed with the bluntness of someone who has physically rebuilt dozens of destroyed homes is that the cycle has no end because the root cause is never confronted directly.
Reports of additional deaths from separate attacks in surrounding communities in the days following March 5 have circulated on social media and through local Christian networks. Africentra cannot confirm these reports independently at the time of publication.
Barbir has called on Alia to publicly acknowledge the religious dimension of the attacks, to escalate pressure on the federal government for meaningful military intervention, and to stop using language that, in Barbir’s view, protects perpetrators from the weight of what they have done.
Alia has directed security forces to act. Whether those forces have the mandate, numbers, and political backing to break the cycle is a question his government has not yet answered with results on the ground.
Twelve people were killed in Kwande on March 5. They were Christians. They were farmers. They lived in Benue State, where the governor is a Catholic priest, and where an American missionary is now telling the world on video that enough is enough. The argument about what to call it continues. The funerals do not wait for that argument to be resolved.
