Omirhobo alleged that armed Fulani militias have carried out sustained attacks on non-Fulani communities, including the razing of villages, sexual violence against women, the killing of children, and the seizure of farmlands.
A human rights advocate and lawyer, Chief Malcolm Emoji Iovo Omirhobo, has launched a blistering critique of Nigeria’s political and traditional leadership, arguing that the country’s spiraling violence should be described not as interfaith tension but as “mass murder and ethnic cleansing.”
In a statement shared on X on Sunday, Omirhobo accused influential figures, including traditional rulers, of masking widespread killings with calls for interfaith harmony while failing to confront what he described as organized violence against indigenous communities across several regions of the country.
“Let us stop the deception,” Omirhobo said. “Nigeria’s problem is not interfaith relations. Nigeria’s problem is mass murder.”
Omirhobo alleged that armed Fulani militias have carried out sustained attacks on non-Fulani communities, including the razing of villages, sexual violence against women, the killing of children, and the seizure of farmlands.
He claimed these attacks have displaced entire populations, particularly in the Middle Belt and parts of southern Nigeria.
“Villages are razed. Women are raped. Children are butchered. Farms are seized,” he said. “And yet the nation’s most powerful voices speak in whispers or not at all.”
The lawyer singled out the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, accusing him of prioritizing public displays of interfaith dialogue while failing to publicly condemn the killings or demand accountability from alleged perpetrators and their sponsors.
“I have never heard him condemn the ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples or mourn the women raped and brutalised,” Omirhobo said. “Instead, what we get is silence wrapped in sermons.”
Omirhobo also criticized the continued enforcement of Sharia-based criminal justice systems in some northern states, arguing that they violate Nigeria’s secular constitution and contribute to religious extremism.
“You cannot preach peace while unconstitutional religious laws are enforced by the state,” he said. “Peace without justice is a lie. Interfaith dialogue without truth is a scam.”
According to him, the institutionalization of Sharia criminal law “provides ideological cover for mob killings, blasphemy lynchings, and religious persecution”.
This has been hotly debated in Nigeria’s legal and political circles for years.
The advocate urged Nigerian leaders to move beyond what he described as “carefully worded speeches from palaces” and instead confront both the perpetrators of violence and the ideologies that sustain it.
“Nigeria needs voices brave enough to name the killers and reject every system that places religion above the Constitution,” Omirhobo said.
“History will remember who spoke out and who stayed silent while mass graves were filled.”