Freedom Lost Anywhere Is Freedom Lost Everywhere – The Truth About Nigeria

Transcript

Linda J. Hansen: Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101® Breakroom Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101®- Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Breakroom Economics Online course, the book, the course and the entire podcast library can be found on Prosperity101.Com. I seek to connect boardroom to break room and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful. I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit Prosperity 101.com.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you so much for joining with me today. As you know, I often talk about freedom, how to protect freedom. It is a steady topic of conversation. With this podcast, we look at how employers can help protect freedom by educating their employees. And overall, we just want everyone to know that the freedoms we have are so fragile. Freedom lost anywhere is really freedom lost everywhere. And all across the world, people are suffering many times, religious persecution, political persecution. One of the countries that I have been following and have been involved to try and help is Nigeria. Listeners, you may not realize, but Christians are the most largely persecuted religious group, and we can see this very clearly in Nigeria. My guest today is Douglas Burton. He is an award winning conflict reporter and the managing editor of Truth Nigeria, based in Washington, DC. I'm so glad to have him on the podcast. I've gotten to know him a little bit, and his heart to help people in Nigeria and around the world is very clear. And I hope by the end of this podcast you will understand why freedom lost anywhere is really freedom lost everywhere. And you will be inspired to stand up for freedom here in America, but also across the world. So thank you, Douglas, for joining with us today. It's an honor to get to know you and to have you on the podcast.

Douglas Burton: Thank you, Linda. We're really happy to get the message out here.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, tell us more about truth Nigeria.

Douglas Burton: Well, it's a new website that was created by Mr. Judd Saul in Iowa. He's in Sioux City, Iowa, and Judd Saul is a documentary filmmaker, and he's the creator of a wonderful nonprofit called Equipping the Persecuted, which aims to give material, aid, food and medicine to the victims of religious persecution in Nigeria. And he's done this successfully for years, just fundraising among the sincere Christian people in the flyover country in the United States. But seven months ago, he called me in to help edit material and report for this site called truthnigeria.com. Because the truth about who's doing the violence and why it's happening in Nigeria just isn't leaking through into mainstream media very often. That's partly because the mainstream media in Nigeria itself is too controlled by the wealthy media house owners and by the government itself, which is very good at controlling the message. So as an experienced journalist, I had, like, 40 years of experience. I used to be an editor of a news magazine in the Washington Times, and I'd spent a couple of years in Iraq. So it's seen a phenomena similar there. I wanted to help bring awareness of the acute, atrocious persecution of Christians in Nigeria, which is largely preventable. It's largely preventable, and the United States could do something to change it. And private citizens and churches can do a lot to stop this happening. If we only knew the truth.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, truth is something that we all need to focus on in all areas of life, and wonderful things happen when truth is revealed. And so one of the things I'd like to help people understand is the parallels. Prior to recording, you and I were discussing some parallels to what's going on in Nigeria versus what's going on in the United States. And we see this attack on truth. And so can you explain some of these parallels? We talked about the similarities in what's happening in the media, in government and crime, the rule of law, explain how it really matters what's happening across the world.

Douglas Burton: Yeah, thanks. When I started reporting in early 2019, I wondered a lot of. I had a lot of questions, why is this violence happening over such a large part of the country? And why are people in the west not aware of it? And I came to realize that people can't understand what's happening in Nigeria because the Nigerian media themselves don't know it or they can't explain it. The spokesmen for the authorities are military spokesmen or police spokesmen who very cogently avoid telling the identity of the people who do these killings. Now, of course, most Americans have heard about the ISIS insurgency that has the name of Boko Haram in the northeast part of the country. The Boko Haram people became famous in 2014 with the kidnapping of the girls from a town called Chibok. First lady Michelle Obama led the chant of bring back our girls. Unfortunately, the Obama administration really leaned toward the pro-islamic side of the government in Nigeria. And actually most of the girls didn't get repatriated. But Americans have not heard about another kind of violence. It's really seemingly complex, and that's the violence against residents, the farming residents of the middle part of the country. And this violence is perpetrated by so called bandit gangs. The media spokesmen of the army and the military for years have been saying that these bandit gangs are, well, they're unknown gunmen. So how do you know who these unknown gunmen are? It's never mentioned that they have any tribal affiliation or religious affiliation, but they do have. And it's been the conscious policy of the government to pretend that this violence has nothing to do with religion. Just like in the United States, violence can never be associated with a ethnicity or a religion. Sometimes it is. But in Nigeria, the government wants to maintain the fiction that this violence is being done by criminals only and it has an economic motivation. Partly that's true, but the fact is that nearly all of the killing of Christians in Nigeria is done for a sectarian and an economic, financial motivation and is being done really in the name of islamization.

In Nigeria, there have been 52,000 people at least that have been killed by these ethnic cleansing gangs who are 90% of one identity. Ethnicity. It's the Fulani tribe, which is a 10 million person tribe in Nigeria. And there's a very large minority of this tribe that is very proud of its radical Islam. The president for eight years, President Muhammadu Buhari, who just left office this year, was a member of this tribe. And he tacitly supported, he was complicit in allowing these gangs to take over Christian towns. Although he always denied it, he always said he was doing the utmost. He would promise that his authorities were going to get to the bottom of these depredations. They were going to arrest the criminals. And of course, it never happened then. In no neighborhoods that I'm aware of anywhere in Nigeria after these massacres, I've been doing this for five years. Have I ever encountered a story about the killers being arrested and prosecuted? It just doesn't happen. I mean, it's an astonishing thing. So it is part of a land grabbing thing that's been going on for 20 years. There has been a historical tension between the Christian residents of Nigeria and the people of the north, who are predominantly Muslim. So there is a sectarian aspect to it. So if the media in Nigeria won't tell the truth, it's a complex situation. You got 600 tribes. It's a big country, 230,000,000 people, a very rich country. It's the richest country and the biggest country in Africa. Very consequential. But if Nigeria media can't tell it, then who can? How can the people in the west get an understanding of what it is and what to do? So that's why we are in, you know, we really should care about Nigeria because it has a great role to play in American prosperity.

Linda J. Hansen: Yes. And you had mentioned that a term before we started recording, it was civilizational crisis. And I thought that that was just so well said because that's what we're experiencing in America. It's what Nigeria is experiencing. We can see it all across the globe. We can see it in the US, Europe, West Africa. We can see it all over the world that this is happening. And many of the same forces are behind it. And so the impact of what's happening in Nigeria regarding how it impacts the US and the impact of what's happening in the US and how it affects mean we, even though we are. I am America first, I believe in America first, but it's certainly not America only. We have to have a strong America to have a strong world and to help protect freedom in Nigeria, we have to help protect freedom in America. So tell us how those two things align and what we can do here in the US to make sure all of these areas, like the media, just the religious freedom, so much of these areas within the civilization that need truth to be exposed. What can we do in the US and how can we wake up to this? I mean, obviously we can come to your website, truth Nigeria and keep learning more. Obviously there's a good plug. Listeners go to the website. But this is so important. People don't think about these things affecting. Know, you go about your day, you've got employers trying to figure out how to make payroll or how to pay their taxes at this time of year. You've got parents wondering how to get kids to soccer practice and how to pay the orthodontist. And you're not thinking about the Christians being persecuted in Nigeria.

Linda J. Hansen: Right? But it matters.

Douglas Burton: It matters.

Linda J. Hansen: So how can we help them understand why it matters?

Douglas Burton: Well, the reason for truth Nigeria is simply to enable people in the west support the Nigerians themselves to take hold of this problem and solve it. Because freedom will only be gained and preserved if the Nigerian people themselves take this bull by the horns. America will never have the responsibility to send troops there and to try and try and fight their battles for them. Right now, what we have is a battle between an insurgency that's known, that's back Boko Haram, which is about 9000 insurgents in the Lake Chad region. And it's a war that's been going on for 14 years. But you also have an effort of the radicalized land grabbing bandits to take over increasingly large sectors of the north and push the perimeter of islamization further toward the south. Now, as this is actually exposed, the government gets embarrassed and they change their behavior. Give you an example. When Donald Trump met President Muhammadu Buhari for the first time in May of 2018, he had a ceremony at the White House to announce the sale of fighter jets that the Nigerians wanted. Actually, they were prop driven aircraft.

So by a serendipitous series of events, Trump became aware of the persecution of the Christians because someone gave him a USA Today article about it. I know the backstory of it. I know who did it. Anyway, so he gets a hold of this article when he meets Buhari out in the Rose garden. He goes off script. He looks at the president and he says, and I know, by the way, why are you allowing the rampant persecution of Christians in Nigeria? And Buhari didn't expect this. He was embarrassed. He lost face big time, which is really hurtful for the president of Nigeria. So anyway, he did. I'm not sure what he said, but we do know one thing. When he went back home, the attacks by the Fulani herdsmen ended for six months. All the Nigerians will tell you this. All of a sudden, there were just no attacks for many months. Very few. So there is apparently some kind of direct connection between leadership in Abuja and the attacks out in flyover country in these terrible areas. So I am encouraged that by exposing what's really going on in Nigeria, the American people will contact their congressmen and their senators and say, we want a change policy. First thing is we want Nigeria to be put back on the bad actor list, which is called country of particular concern, which happened in 2020 because of the strong efforts of a Trump appointee, Professor Robert Destro, who was assistant secretary of state. The secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, without explanation, took Nigeria off that list when he went for his first trip to Nigeria in November of 2021. That was his entree present to them, and he's made many trips to Africa since then. Secretary Lincoln has never explained why he did that. So parallels between the United States and Nigeria are these. First off, there is increasing loss of law and order all over the country, but especially because of border migration, Nigeria has big population, surge in population. But so do the surrounding Sahel countries. And many people are surging across the borders coming into Nigeria, especially Muslim people.

The north is predominantly Muslim and they are getting hired as mercenaries to help the ethnic cleansing in the country. Well, United States obviously has a border problem. It's the number one story in the United States. It's been number one, I think, for several years. We have a border problem. It's a huge national security threat. We mentioned previously that Nigeria has fake news media. Well, I think that's a term that Americans are very familiar with. At the same time, Nigeria has a political class. They've got wealthy people of all major parties. There's really only two. And those wealthy people tend to be in power as governors or as county chairman or as presidents, no matter who wins. What you're dealing with is a state of affairs whereby there's no consensus on what truth is. And the media and the academy is underscore, it's providing support, it's preserving false narratives. In many, many ways. There's consensus now in the United States that the American consumer public was deceived about the pandemic. They were conceived about the origins of COVID, They were conceived about the proper remediation of COVID same thing happened in Nigeria. There is a takeover of the US school system by radical gender ideologists across the country. We've written many stories about that for epic times. There is also an effort to take over the school system in Nigeria.

The woke ideologies that start in the United States or come from Europe, they're slowly creeping in through elite media and elite academic institutions in Nigeria. So what you have in the United States is a trans, is, as you said, is a crisis of civilization. There's no consensus about what's true. We can't trust the administrative state. We can't trust our FBI, we can't trust our CIA. We can't trust the Department of Justice. Well, guess what? Something very similar has been happening in Nigeria for many years and the Nigerians are starting to wake up and we are exploring this in truth, Nigeria. We explain how the government authorities willingly and deliberately refuse to come to the aid of these communities that are persecuted, that are under attack until it's too late. I'll give you a perfect example of this. It's breaking news and we break more of it than probably any other publication. There was a terrible series of massacres in north central Nigeria at Christmas time. It began December 23. It went on for about five days in the state of Plateau, a very wealthy, beautiful agricultural state in north central Nigeria. The attack started in December 23 and over almost 300 people were killed in that short period of time. They were killed in a heartbreaking way. They were shot to death. Some were burned to death in their homes, some were slashed to death. And by all accounts, there's no disputing this. The military didn't come. The military was there. The third division of the Nigerian army is based in Jos, which is the capital city. The military was in the area, but they came too late or they didn't come at all.

Now, in the meantime, something else has been noticed. The army has made an assiduous new effort, a vigorous effort to go after kidnapping gangs and to arrest them and to arrest terrorists in other states, like Niger State in the northwest part like Zamfara state and Katsina state and Kaduna state. There are many stories about the military making a remarkable new effort to attack, to go after the lawbreakers in those states. Now, what's the difference between Plateau State where we had the massacre, and Niger State and Zamfara state? The difference is that Plateau State is majority Christian and Niger state is majority Muslim, although there are many Christian’s there and Zamfara is Muslim. So the army was sent out to attack the criminals and the kidnappers in the Muslim areas where Muslim farmers, ranchers and Muslim farmers were threatened that for some reason they were not mobilized. In Plateau State, the army officers, the military say, oh, well, we were overwhelmed. Well, there's another explanation for that. So we're encouraging Nigerians to have a critical mind and not be obsequious about accepting the talking points of their government.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, that would be something we need to encourage Americans about. We need to have Americans who do not just accept the narrative that's coming from media and government. And it was interesting, the parallel I saw about how you were discussing that they're protecting in one area but not protecting in another. It kind of reminds me of peaceful protests where people are thrown into jail versus rioting, burning, destruction, injury to people and property, and no one is arrested and some are rewarded. And that happens in America. So a loss of freedom anywhere is a loss of freedom everywhere. And a loss of truth anywhere is a loss of truth everywhere. Truth is, there's truth and non-truth. I don't care what anybody says in this era. It's, well, that's your truth or that's my truth. There's truth and there's no truth. And I believe truth and time go together. And as a known, Jesus said, I am the way the truth and the life he leads us. All truth and wonderful things happen when truth is exposed because that is when we can truly start to address problems and find appropriate solutions. So I thank you so much for your work with truth Nigeria. I thank you so much for serving our nation the way that you have in the past. I didn't really even get into your bio too much, but you've served in the state department and you've had other roles where you are very actively engaged in promoting and protecting freedom. And we thank you for that. Please share the website again and how people may contact you personally.

Douglas Burton: Thank you. Yeah, the website is truthnigeria.com. People who want to talk to reporters or witnesses of violence in Nigeria can contact me personally and I'll introduce you. If you're a journalist or you're a writer and you would like to get primary sources in the killing zones, I will let you know who they are. I will give you the introduction. You can reach me at burtonnewsandviews@gmail.com. That's spelled burtonnewsviews@gmail.com. And they are easily contacted. I mean, they're easy to reach. You can call them through the Whatsapp messaging service. You've got a telephone number. It costs almost nothing to call Nigeria. There's a six hour time difference. And here's something that I recommend. This is how I got started. Five years ago, I didn't know anybody in Nigeria. Somebody gave me the name of a priest in the northeast part of the country. And I called him up and he told me about how alone he was. He was in Boko Haram territory. And he said, when I walked into my parish the first time, I saw graves everywhere. I felt like I was walking through a, you know, actually, I choked up and I cried with him. I prayed with him and I cried because I felt like this guy is just completely alone, doing a good job. Brave man. Nobody knows about him, and he's like many Christian’s. Interestingly, a couple of weeks later, there was an attack by Boko Haram in his area. His fellow Priest called me up. I took the testimony of the priest on the line. I wrote it up, and the next day I published that story in the Washington examiner, and I got my little fee for it. So that gave me the idea that if individuals in the United States will just make a contact by telephone with someone in the war zones and then befriend them and then allow them, the victims of these crimes, to call you and tell you about a story. This is one way of getting around the mainstream media in the United States, right? So there's a huge role for civil society to play. Don't rely upon big nonprofits to tell you what's going on. They'll bottleneck all the information and then send you fundraising letters. Don't rely upon big media, especially CNN or MSNBC. No. Go directly to the people in the war zones. You can reach us if you'd like to make a donation to the orphanage of this wonderful organization I found called equipping the persecuted, that's easy. Go to equippingthepersecuted.org and there's a fundraising link there. It's really a worthy cause.

Linda J. Hansen: Wonderful. So, listeners, you can go to truthnigeria.com, equippingthepersecuted.org. And remember, what goes around comes around. Now, if we do not promote freedom and liberty here in America, if we don't stand up for these people, who will? If we don't stand up for our own freedoms, who know? I, for one, don't want to go to my deathbed or to have my grandchildren ask me, what did you do to protect freedom? I don't want to know that I ended my life without doing everything I can to protect freedom and to promote truth for not only people in America, but people all around the world. And that's what really matters. So thank you so much. I know that this is usually a business podcast where we talk about what employers can share with employees. But employers, this is important to share. Maybe you do international business, and you need to understand how these political uprisings and how the crime and persecution occurs in these different nations. Believe me, it comes here. These open borders, the lawlessness, the relative truth, the absolute disregard for human life. It's in America, too. So we can't just think it's over on the other side of the world. And it's not our responsibility. All of it is. We are all called to promote truth, promote freedom, and to make sure we protect that for future generations. So thank you again. Douglas Burton@truthnigeria.com thank you so much for joining us.

Douglas Burton: Thanks, Linda.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you again for listening to the Prosperity 101® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share, and leave a great review. Don't forget to visit Prosperity101.com to access the entire podcast library to order my newest book, Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck or to enroll you or your employees in the Breakroom Economics online course. You can also receive the free e-book, 10 Tips for Helping Employees Understand How Public Policy Affects Their Paychecks. Freedom is never free. Understanding the foundations of prosperity and the policies of prosperity will help you to protect prosperity as you become informed, involved, and impactful. Please contact us today at Prosperity101.com to let us know how we can serve you. Thank you.

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