I'm John Batchel. I welcome Marianne Wahaba of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy,

watching the persecution of particularly Christians in Africa, a vast continent.

We spoke of persecution in Egypt, North Africa.

But now we go to Nigeria, the most popular state, light, sweet, crude,

rich, a democracy, but a troubled democracy with jihadists roaming across the north of the country,

Boko Haram, and murders of Christians in particular, many of them, and then abductions of

Christians in particular, by whom, to what end?

Mary, I'm a very good evening, too.

There's no generality here.

The Christians are persecuted and feel unprotected by the state government.

Who are the perpetrators of the abuse?

Good evening to you.

Good evening to you, sir.

Thank you for having me.

This is a great story for us to break down as the Trump administration has kind of spotlighted the persecution of Christians in Nigeria in the last few weeks and months,

and we've seen the president take action. And it's a complicated situation, but I'll do my best here to

condense it for us.

Christian persecution is happening all over Africa, but in Nigeria is particularly interesting because the Christian persecution kind of falls into one of two buckets.

And in the first bucket, you have your classic Islamist jihadi groups.

These are things like ISIS and ISIS offshoots and affiliates, Boko Haram,

I swap, et cetera. And that persecution is something that's relatively easy to understand because

it's ideologically motivated. On the second bucket is where things get a little more complicated.

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