By Sam Jones

There is a reason the terrorists burned the village during the funeral. They do not merely want the land. They want the memory.

The Middle Belt is burning again. Nine dead. Dozens are hiding in the forests. Homes torched. Churches desecrated. Villagers were ambushed while burying their loved ones. This is not a “clash.” It is not a “conflict.” It is not a “tragedy.”

It is jihad.

Until we recover the moral clarity to say so, the blood will keep soaking into the soil while the global church mutters its helpless prayers and the Nigerian government looks the other way.

According to reports from TruthNigeria, a sustained wave of attacks across Plateau State, centered on Bokkos County, left multiple villages under siege between May 25th and 28th. A pastor was ambushed. A young boy killed. Seven villagers were gunned down in Kopmur and hastily buried in a mass grave, only for mourners to be attacked during the funeral.

And still the Nigerian governor said nothing. And still the international community yawns. And still the media hides behind language that would be laughable if it weren’t soaked in blood. “Armed assailants.” “Gunmen.” “Unknown attackers.”

But the victims know who they are. Fulani jihadists—driven not by mere hunger or herding disputes, but by a long memory and a strategic goal.

This is what no Western outlet wants to print: Nigeria is witnessing a slow, systematic revival of the Sokoto Caliphate. The same Usman Dan Fodio who waged jihad in the 19th century now lends his playbook to a new generation of Fulani militants. These are not random attacks. They are ideological offensives—calculated acts of ethnic cleansing to remove Christian populations and claim ancestral land.

And they’re working.

Just last April, over 200 Christians were massacred in Plateau and Benue States—70 of them in Bokkos alone. Now, in a renewed assault, hundreds of armed militants have displaced thousands more, trapping civilians in the bush while smoke still rises from burning homes.

We have no excuse to pretend we don’t know what this is. The data is clear: Fulani extremists have killed more Nigerians than Boko Haram in the last decade. But they wear no black flags. They don’t chant in Arabic. They don’t carry suicide vests. They kill with rifles, not bombs. And so, the world gives them a pass.

Let us be honest: If these were Christians killing Muslims by the hundreds, Nigeria would already be under U.N. sanctions. Instead, these victims are inconvenient. They’re rural. They’re poor. And they’re Christian. So, we call it “communal violence” and return to our feed.

This is not ignorance. It’s cowardice.

And Christians in the West are not exempt. We scroll past the burned bodies of our brethren because we do not know how to feel righteous without a trending hashtag. We have trained ourselves to equate relevance with proximity, and so, we fall silent when the blood is shed too far away to touch.

But heaven hears it.

There is no neutral ground in a war of memory. Either we remember the martyrs—or we allow the caliphate to rewrite the map with blood.

Nigeria does not need more outrage. It needs clarity. And then it needs courage. The government must abandon the failed strategy of appeasement and euphemism. The military must be empowered and unshackled to act decisively. And the Church—globally—must begin to name this evil for what it is: a jihad of displacement.

We do not need more peace talks. We need justice. We need backbone. And we need to remember that there is no compromise with an ideology that burns villages mid-funeral.

We can either confront the scandal now, or one day explain to our grandchildren why we did nothing while the embers of the Sokoto Caliphate reignited under our watch.