How Unverified Claims From Onitsha Screwdriver Seller Influenced Trump’s Claims On Christian Genocide, US Airstrikes In Nigeria

On Christmas Day, President Trump ordered airstrikes in another part of Nigeria, inspired in part by the narratives Umeagbalasi had been promoting.

In a bustling market in Onitsha, the commercial hub of southeastern Nigeria, a short man with a single earbud weaves his way through wheelbarrows piled high with sugar cane and porters balancing stacks of hard hats. His destination is the tool section, where he runs a modest shop selling screwdrivers and wrenches.

That man, Emeka Umeagbalasi, is far more than a local salesman. Despite his humble trade, he has become an unexpected source of research cited by U.S. Republican lawmakers to support the misleading claim that Christians are being systematically targeted for slaughter in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Representative Riley Moore of Virginia, and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey have all referenced his work, according to reporting by Ruth Maclean, West Africa bureau chief for The Times. Maclean’s coverage spans 25 countries, including Nigeria, Congo, the Sahel, and Central Africa.

From Onitsha in Anambra State, Maclean observed how Umeagbalasi’s ideas reached the highest levels of power. On Christmas Day, President Trump ordered airstrikes in another part of Nigeria, inspired in part by the narratives Umeagbalasi had been promoting. For the screwdriver merchant, seeing the American president embrace his cause was nothing short of “miraculous.”

“If nothing is done,” Umeagbalasi warned in an interview from his home, “Nigeria will explode.”

He claims to have documented 125,000 Christian deaths in Nigeria since 2009. Yet, as he admitted to The New York Times, his figures are often unverified, drawn largely from “secondary sources” such as Christian advocacy groups, Nigerian media reports, and even Google searches.

According to The New York Times, Senator Cruz, Representative Riley Moore, and Representative Chris Smith did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokeswoman declined to address questions about Emeka Umeagbalasi’s data and methods, but issued a statement declaring that “the massacre of Christians by radical, terrorist scum will not be tolerated.”

Collecting reliable data on Nigeria’s violence has long been fraught with difficulty. The government does not publish comprehensive figures on killings, kidnappings, or attacks, nor does it record the religious identities of victims. Many incidents occur in remote areas and are reported only much later, if at all.

Research indicates that Christians have been killed in significant numbers, but scholars emphasize that insecurity and impunity in the hardest-hit regions threaten both Christians and Muslims alike.

Umeagbalasi, a Catholic, founded the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) in 2008, which he operates from his home.

His wife, Blessing, an evangelical Christian, serves as a board member. He claims academic credentials in security studies and peace and conflict resolution from the National Open University of Nigeria, and describes himself as a “powerful” and “knowledgeable” investigator, likening his work to that of veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour.

Yet when pressed on the accuracy of his findings, Umeagbalasi admitted that he seldom travels to the regions where attacks occur. Instead, he often assumes the religion of victims based on location.

He has asserted that more than 7,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria during the first seven months of 2025. However, independent monitors at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project estimate roughly 6,700 deaths in that period, including Islamist insurgents and military personnel. Of those, about 3,000 were civilians, but the data does not specify religious affiliation.

Umeagbalasi explained his methodology: if a mass killing or abduction takes place in an area he believes to be predominantly Christian, he classifies the victims as Christians.

“For instance, if killings take place in Borno today, when I look at it, I will just look at the zone where the killings take place,” he said.

“Once they take place in southern Borno, there is likelihood of the victims being Christians or many of them or most of them being Christians.”

The New York Times emphasized that many of Boko Haram’s victims are, in fact, Muslim. One recent case illustrates the discrepancy: 25 schoolgirls were abducted in Kebbi State. Local officials and the school principal confirmed that all of the girls were Muslim. Yet Emeka Umeagbalasi insisted they were mostly Christian.

“The girls — a majority of them are Christians, but you know what Nigerian government did?” he said. “They went and Islamized them. Gave them Islamic names just to confuse people.”

Alkasim Abdulkadir, spokesperson for Nigeria’s foreign minister, rejected claims that the government misrepresented the girls’ religion.

“There’s a lot of fallacy to his research, a lot of confirmation bias,” he said of Mr. Umeagbalasi. “He’s very performative.”

Mr. Umeagbalasi rarely travels to Nigeria’s Middle Belt, the area most affected by violence against Christians.

Instead, he relies largely on secondary sources such as news reports and data from Open Doors, a Christian advocacy organization that has also been referenced by U.S. President Donald Trump. Another key source for him is Truth Nigeria, a project run by Judd Saul, a filmmaker and evangelist based in Iowa.

Like several other Christian advocacy groups in Nigeria and the United States, Truth Nigeria and Intersociety often attribute attacks on Christians to Fulani ethnic militias.

The Fulani are a large, predominantly Muslim ethnic group spread across West Africa, many of whom have historically been nomadic herders.

Umeagbalasi has made highly inflammatory remarks about the Fulani, describing them in dehumanizing terms and suggesting they should be confined to a single Nigerian state, a proposal critics say would amount to ethnic cleansing.

His claims and statistics have been challenged by researchers, journalists, and even senior Christian figures in Nigeria. Nnamdi Obasi of the International Crisis Group criticized Intersociety’s methodology as unreliable and said its reported figures contain basic mathematical errors.

Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto has argued that focusing narrowly on casualty figures among Christians misses the broader problem of a weak Nigerian state that fails to protect all its citizens, regardless of religion.

Despite the criticism, Umeagbalasi continues his work undeterred. At the time of reporting, he was nearing completion of a new report on what he describes as the deteriorating security situation for Christians in Nigeria.

“This is our heavenly marathon,” he said.

In his living room, its walls painted green and black, a crowded bookshelf sagged under the weight of old papers and plaques. One plaque bore the inscription: “For excellent service to humanity.”

From this setting, he claimed that nearly 20,000 churches had been destroyed in Nigeria over the past 16 years. He further asserted that the country had 100,000 churches in total.

But with no official government data on the number of churches, how did he arrive at that figure?

His answer was simple: “Googled it.”