For years, two competing stories have dominated how the world talks about violence in Nigeria. One, favored by Abuja and by many Western diplomats anxious not to inflame religious tension, describes "farmer-herder clashes" fueled by climate change and land pressure , a story of drought and desperation, not design. The other, gaining ground in Washington and in parts of the American press, describes a one-sided Christian genocide, a campaign of Islamist extermination that the Nigerian state is too weak or too complicit to stop.