Here is the unedited transcription from the Congressional Briefing on 22 April 2026 at the US Capitol. ‘Working with the Nigerian government to end the genocide is like working with the Third Reich to end the Holocaust’
Moderator: I’m about to introduce a hero. His name is Mike Arnold. He’s made 16 trips to Nigeria, some under Level 4 “do not travel” warnings. He founded Africa Arise International, which today runs schools for more than 600 displaced children in camps that the Nigerian government says don’t exist. He’s a former mayor of Blanco, Texas, and he is the author of Epicenter: Nigeria, Radical Islam, and the War for Global Order, a number one bestseller on Amazon. Mike, thank you so much.
Mike Arnold: Everything I am about to say is factual. I have 19 pages of references if anybody wants to question anything I say; it’s right here, because some of it might be shocking. Nigeria, the sixth-largest nation on earth, is on track to be the third largest by 2050. It’s a top-five OPEC nation with trillions of dollars in minerals, a cultural powerhouse. Nigerians are among the most educated and wealthy in the United States, and they do it with integrity, sharing the values that made America great.
Last year, General Michael Langley of AFRICOM declared the region anchored by northern Nigeria as the epicenter of global terror. ISIS, al-Qaeda, and others call it home. Their stated ambition: full sharia across Nigeria and then a global jihad launchpad. The recent Old Dominion shooter was radicalized in Nigeria.
Two scenarios: America’s greatest African ally, innovative, peaceful, and prosperous, or the greatest security threat of the next generation, a sharia-exporting giant.
A little bit of history: in 1804, Ousmane Danfodio waged a jihad and founded the Sokoto Caliphate, Africa’s largest pre-colonial empire. Beheading, raping, destruction, displacement—two million slaves at its peak. This caliphate has never ended. That’s northern Nigeria.
The British found two worlds: a brutal sharia north and a vibrant, friendly south. They kept the caliphate intact as enforcers of indirect rule, then merged the two in 1914. The south declared independence in 1967—Biafra. The civil war that followed saw the British back the north, which blockaded the south, shot down Red Cross planes, and up to three million, mostly children, starved to death. The south fell in 1970.
Since then, power has stayed in the north by design. The caliphate—the current constitution imposed by a northern military dictator—mentions sharia and Islamic terms 165 times; Christianity, zero. At least $9 billion a year in blood minerals are looted, mainly by China, paying jihadists and corrupting military and political officials. It was President Goodluck Jonathan, in his living room, who leaned in and informed me about that. I know a lot of people there. I’ve been there a lot. Most of this is firsthand.
Some key people have been involved in this. Barack Obama unleashed the current genocide in 2010. On my first trip to Nigeria, there was an accidental Christian president, Goodluck Jonathan. A booming economy—the only nation on earth where radical Islam was being pushed back. No slaughter, hardly any displaced people, just random incidents.
A northern warlord challenged Muhammadu Buhari, publicly calling for sharia law across Nigeria and globally. Boko Haram chose him to mediate with the government. Tinubu helped get him into office—the current president. David Axelrod was his campaign advisor. Obama withdrew counterterrorism support to Jonathan and blocked other nations from helping. Jihadists flooded in from North Africa. Villages were massacred, millions displaced, raped, enslaved, kidnapped, churches burned. Buhari ran on ending the insecurity. It only got worse.
Another person: the Sultan of Sokoto. He’s like pope and king to 108 million Muslims, Danfodio’s 20th-generation successor. He was a Nigerian general deployed to Pakistan and Afghanistan during the war on terror, when we captured Nigerian fighters alongside al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He returned and assumed the throne in 2006, and international terror tactics and organizations appeared soon after. He has never decreed an end to the killing or mineral looting in his domain, but he’s called social media a terror organization. In 2025, he publicly supported the push for sharia in traditionally Christian southern states.
President Bola Tinubu—if that’s his real name—in 1993 forfeited $460,000 to a federal court in Chicago and fled the United States. That was proceeds from a heroin trafficking ring, which, by the way, funds 37% of jihad around the world. He has appointed a man to rewrite the national curriculum whose defining credential is the book The Islamization of Knowledge, which explicitly calls for intellectual jihad to oust Western education from nursery schools up to universities. This is academic Boko Haram by definition, and this is the man Tinubu put in charge of the curriculum of 50 million Nigerian children.
His new defense chief called the terrorists “prodigal sons” who deserve rehabilitation. That’s the defense chief. Nuhu Ribadu personally called me on October 5th to be Nigeria’s Jane Fonda. It is documented. He armed Miyetti Allah, the Fulani militia chaired by the Sultan and named in HR 7457 for potential FDL designation. He has publicly called the terrorists “brothers.”
Massad Boulos, Trump’s senior advisor for Africa and the Middle East, holds multiple citizenships, including Nigerian, and lived in Lagos for decades. He parrots verbatim talking points of terror-linked northern imams. He is CEO of his family company, which currently profits from multibillion-dollar no-bid contracts issued by the Tinubu administration, issued to his business partner. He sells the heavy equipment to build these projects—$13 billion in no-bid contracts. This is Trump’s senior advisor. He’s also Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law.
Examples of ongoing failures and impunity: in Borno State, wiped out in the Gwoza massacre of 2014, the government recently assured refugees in Cameroon it was safe for them to return and paid them to return. Within weeks, on March 3rd, Boko Haram slaughtered dozens and abducted more than 300 into slavery, including the wife and daughter of a friend of mine. The military was largely AWOL. The attacks continue.
Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a 2022 college student, after finals posted on WhatsApp, “Jesus is the greatest. He helped me pass my exams.” The next day on campus, as professors and police watched, she was beaten, stoned, tires heaped on her, and burned alive while fellow students filmed selfies in front of the flames, celebrating. The deputy imam of the National Mosque, who performed President Buhari’s daughter’s wedding, publicly justified the killing within 24 hours on his Twitter account. No one was punished.
Nnamdi Kanu, a British-Nigerian broadcaster, was illegally abducted from Kenya, tried under a defunct law, and is now serving life in Sokoto prison for words spoken in Great Britain. Meanwhile, a northern imam recently offered a one-million-naira bounty for the head of a pastor, then doubled it to taunt his critics. No charges, no condemnation from officials. I’ve been corresponding with the pastor. I helped him get to a safe house, but he and his family are in danger and need help.
The Nigerian government goes to great expense to rehabilitate the killers, while millions of innocent displaced victims are denied, neglected, and dying.
The narrative war—the “farmer-herder” and climate change framing—started in the Obama State Department. The original reference document was written by a career sharia propagandist hired by George Soros. At least $10 million in confirmed U.S. lobbying contracts are now running through former Trump administration officials, Nigerian government lobbyists, northern imams, foreign agents, conflicted advisers, and now even Russian state television. They are among those working to shield this regime from accountability.
The real narrative is this: Nigeria is in the throes of an Islamic conquest. Since 2009, they have slaughtered as many as 125,000 Christians and 60,000 Muslims. This is not simply a religious freedom issue; this is national and global security.
The emergency: as many as 10 to 12 million, mostly youth, are now displaced, with a 50–60% chance of radicalization by 2030 without intervention. Most are denied by the government, who call them beggars and criminals. Without intervention, this could yield five to six million more jihadists over the next five to six years.
Intervention is not hard. The international community has the money and the mandate to help if the displaced are simply recognized. In 2015, the UNHCR documented multiple displacement camps in Abuja. Today, they deny those camps exist. I’ve run schools in those same camps since 2020. They do exist.
I affirm the cycle of violence is not inborn or inevitable. A lot of Americans write it off: “Oh, that’s just what they do.” Yes, children who saw their parents hacked to death often come to our schools wanting revenge, but with an education, they gain character, hope, and vision, and they want to go back to rebuild.
What must happen? Nigeria has long been strangled by radical Islamists, predatory extraction, globalist meddling, and institutional corruption. Working with the Nigerian government to end the genocide is like working with the Third Reich to end the Holocaust. They smile and spin as they wait for Trump to leave office. Since CPC designation, killing and impunity have only gotten worse.
Sanctions will not work. Visa bans will not work. They are ideologues and will pivot east. Intentional denial of recognition and aid to displaced people, in this circumstance, meets the legal standard of genocide. This is provable.
Indict the Tinubu administration. Arrest them. They are guilty of genocide, and it is provable. Conduct a valid census and evidentiary briefing of the displaced. They are witnesses to genocide and need help. Investigate the Sultan of Sokoto as a terror sponsor. Circumstantial evidence demands it. We know where the militant camps are—wipe them out. Bring the enablers to justice.
Demand the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and other prisoners of conscience. Offer asylum protection to them and others threatened by this regime. Ensure a free election in 2027. It could be done for the cost of a Tomahawk missile volley. Tinubu was declared the winner with less than nine million votes in a nation of 230 million. A free election changes everything.
Let the people vote on a new constitution and self-determination. Like so many other British colonial contraptions designed to fail, separation is likely inevitable—and it is just.
The time is now. Nigeria is at a crossroads. It will become either a peaceful, prosperous ally or a massive launchpad for global jihad. There is no going back to the status quo. If the world turns away after this unprecedented scrutiny, the backlash will be bloody and absolute.
The window is closing. We must call this what it is and intervene now, or the current genocide will grow and draw more innocent blood—not just there, but here in the United States.
Thank you.
Mike, thank you. Wow.