When: November 17th, 5:00 p.m. EST

Where: Great Room A, Edward J. Pryzbyla Student Center

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On the night of 13-14 June 2025, some gunmen popularly known as Fulani herdsmen attacked a predominantly Christian village, Yelwata, located in Nigeria's Benue State, where hundreds of displaced families had been sheltered. Within days, public estimates of the dead ranged from 45 to more than 200. The attackers were described as herders, bandits, jihadists, and genocidal Fulani, and the killings were called either a massacre, martyrdom and genocide depending on varied stakeholders. In this talk I will trace how the testimonies of survivors of these mayhem transform into tallies moving from the local and international agencies, to Rome, and on to Capitol Hill. I tackle three major problems involved in this movement: 1. the problem of numbering dead. 2. the problem with naming the attackers. 3. the problem with describing the attack. This talk, drawn from ongoing research, will show how survivors’ accounts change as they move up the chain. The overarching question is what is lost when testimony becomes a tally, and what does it mean for the church, policy, and the debate over Christian genocide in Nigeria.

Open and Free to the Public — Light Refreshments to Follow