Nigeria, Nov. 3 -- Last Friday, the Trump administration returned Nigeria to its list of "Countries of Particular Concern" for religious freedom violations, asserting that Christians face systematic persecution amounting to an ongoing genocide in the country. The designation has reverberated through diplomatic channels and ignited fresh debates about the nature of violence in Africa's most populous nation. Yet, for all its moral urgency, this framing risks a dangerous oversimplification of a conflict where nothing - absolutely nothing - is straightforward.

To view Nigeria's cascade of violence through a purely religious lens is to fundamentally misunderstand its nature. The reality on the ground reveals a tangled web of historical grieva...