Reported by Afilawos Magana Sur, Managing Editor, Sele Media Africa | March 23, 2026 | Exclusive.

Nigerian lawyer Franc Utoo witnessed a massacre that took 321 lives in a single dark night. Officials called it a “farmer-herder clash.” He calls it what it is — and he’s about to say so in front of the most powerful conservatives in the United States. On the night of June 13, 2025, Fulani militants descended on Yelewata — a quiet Nigerian village whose name few outside the country could place on a map. By morning, 34 members of Franc Utoo’s extended family were dead. So were 287 of his kinsmen. In a single, coordinated attack, an entire community bled into the red soil of central Nigeria. It was not a tragedy of circumstance. It was, Utoo insists, a genocide — carefully planned, deliberately executed, and systematically silenced. Now, that silence is about to be shattered — not in Abuja, not in Lagos, but in Texas, USA. Franc Utoo has been confirmed as a speaker at CPAC 2026 — the Conservative Political Action Conference, the single most influential annual gathering of the American conservative movement, where U.S. presidents, senators, and the leading voices of the Republican Party gather to set the nation’s political agenda. The man who refuses to be silenced Franc Utoo is not a politician. He is a trained lawyer — educated at Northumbria University School of Law in Britain, and holding a Master of Public Administration in Public and Nonprofit Management from the University of Central Oklahoma in the United States. He is not a man who deals in emotion alone; he deals in evidence, in arguments, in accountability. And the evidence he carries with him to Texas is written in the blood of his own people. He now serves with Equipping The Persecuted, an organization dedicated to standing with Christians facing violence around the world. His mission at CPAC is not to beg for sympathy. It is to name an evil — clearly and publicly — before the key influencers of the Republican Party and the American church, and to demand that they stop looking away.
“This is not mere farmer–herder clashes. It is a deliberate genocide against Christians — even as officials deny it and pay foreign lobbyists millions of dollars to soften our story.” Franc Utoo, confirmed CPAC 2026 speaker blood money and the lobbyists paid to bury the truth Perhaps the most explosive element of Utoo’s mission is not just what he will say about the violence — it is what he will say about those working to suppress the truth. According to Utoo, Nigerian officials have paid foreign lobbyists millions of dollars to soften the narrative of Christian persecution before the very American political class he is now preparing to address directly. In a country where more than 30 Christians were reportedly killed every day in 2025 by Islamist terrorist groups, the official government line has consistently framed the bloodshed as routine communal tension — “farmer-herder clashes” — deflecting international scrutiny and shielding bad actors from accountability. That framing, Utoo argues, is not naivety. It is a paid political strategy, funded by those who benefit from the world not knowing the full truth. CONTEXT: Reports from major international religious freedom monitors have consistently ranked Nigeria among the most dangerous countries in the world for Christians. Watchdog organizations have documented thousands of deaths, church burnings, and mass kidnappings across Nigeria’s Middle Belt and northern states — a crisis that receives a fraction of the global attention given to conflicts elsewhere. Why CPAC? why now? The selection of CPAC as the platform for this message is itself significant. The American conservative movement — and particularly its Evangelical Christian base — represents one of the most politically engaged religious constituencies on earth. Republican administrations have historically engaged with international religious freedom as a foreign policy priority. By speaking directly into that space, Utoo is not making a charitable appeal. He is making a strategic one. He is asking conservatives to see Nigeria’s Christian persecution not as a distant African tragedy, but as a frontline battle in the global defence of religious freedom that the American right claims as a core value — and to respond with the political pressure, advocacy, and resourcing that matches that claim. His message to his Nigerian audience is equally direct and equally powerful: “Know that we are carrying our pain and our courage straight into one of the most important rooms in U.S. Republican politics, so that the cries from our villages can no longer be ignored.” A Voice for the Voiceless — From Yelewata to Texas there is something almost impossible to comprehend about the journey from a massacre in Yelewata to a podium at CPAC. But Franc Utoo is making that journey, carrying not just his own grief, but the grief of a people who have been told, again and again — by officials, diplomats, and carefully-paid lobbyists — that what they experienced was not what they know it to be. He is walking into that room to say otherwise. And the Americans in that room — senators, strategists, pastors, presidents — will have no choice but to hear him. Share this article. Speak up. The cries from Nigeria’s villages are reaching the halls of American power — make sure no one can claim they never heard them. Follow Sele Media Africa for updates on Franc Utoo’s address at CPAC 2026.

Afilawos Magana Sur

Afilawos Magana Sur is a journalist from Bogoro Local Government Area of Bauchi State, currently based in Bauchi metropolis. He is known for his commitment to accurate, ethical, and responsible journalism, with a focus on reporting issues of public relevance and community development.

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