THE “SPIES” WHO CRIED GENOCIDE

An Investigative Exposé on the “Christian Genocide” Narrative and the Weaponization of Terrorism in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.

DD Geopolitics, 9 April 2026

The African Noticer, Apr 09, 2026

“If the Nigerian government is not going to protect you, go and protect yourself… Whatever you feel you have the power to do, do it to protect yourself.”

— Judd Saul, Iowa insurance salesman, issuing a public call to arms for Nigerian civilians. March 2026

When Your Source Is You, Yourself, and I

On March 20, 2026, the Nigeria-based outlet Sahara Reporters posted a video message from an American named Judd Saul, head of an Iowa nonprofit called Equipping The Persecuted, a missionary organization operating in the Middle Belt of Nigeria. In the video, Saul claimed inside intelligence on an imminent terrorist attack in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, naming exact dates, routes, and tactics. He said drone surveillance had verified machine-gun placements. Then he urged Nigerian civilians to arm themselves.

“More Attacks Coming! Be Vigilant!” -Judd Saul

The questions came immediately. Was he a missionary or a security expert? How does an insurance salesman from Sioux City, Iowa, obtain real-time drone surveillance of remote Nigerian river crossings? Why does he keep raising the same alarm pattern: terrorist incidents, herder-farmer clashes, and Christian massacres on a loop? And why does every alarm from this network arrive in the same packaging: there is a Christian genocide in Nigeria, and the Nigerian government is complicit in the systematic extermination of said Christians?

What happens after the alert is even more suspicious. These conservative U.S. publications (CBN, Washington Times, Epoch Times, etc.), congressional offices, and religious media outlets treat Saul’s “terror alerts” as primary intelligence. He has a website, Truth Nigeria, which publishes these claims. Then U.S. media outlets echo the narrative, and Saul is paraded around as a guest speaker on podcasts like Tim Pool’s The Culture War and the Lara Logan Show. He even held a press conference on Capitol Hill back in March. Once these media outlets echo the claim, it is then cited as independent corroboration of what Saul claimed in the first place. He is the source, the reporter, and the person who checks the facts all at the same time. No external source has ever confirmed the 89% success rate he publishes on his website, as no external source has ever been granted the ability to independently assess his methods.

Is this press operation legit, or is there some foolery afoot?

It’s time to put on our investigative journalism hats and do some noticing and networking.

THE NETWORK: THE AMERICANS AND THE NIGERIANS

The Many Hats Of Judd Saul

Judd Saul is a very busy man, with more occupations than Kirk on Gilmore Girls. When he is not attending the wedding of the Hungarian Ambassador to Nigeria in Budapest, he is a documentary filmmaker, political activist, journalist, security expert, missionary, and, since 2020, founder and president of Equipping The Persecuted, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has allegedly built, in just four years, an international media operation, a terror alert system, an orphanage, two K-12 schools, and what it claims is a staff of more than 115 Nigerian personnel across the Middle Belt. Whether all of that actually exists is a question the organization’s own filings do not answer. More on that later.

Saul the Insurance Salesman

Judd Saul grew up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and for most of his adult life has sold insurance out of a suite in Sioux City, in the same state, operating under FTM Insurance (For The Mission Insurance), where the tagline is explicit: every policy sold funds Christian aid to Nigeria. What a line! A marketing angle of using a charitable message to market your business. However, no reviews or comments have been found from customers who either complimented him on his product/service or acknowledged him as a vendor/agent to do business with. It appears that he has no customers to date.

Saul the Filmmaker

Saul’s documentary portfolio is essentially a filmography of civilizational, anti-woke, Islamophobic paranoia with a slight disdain for the IRS. His credits include Unfair: Exposing the IRS (2014), The Enemies Within (2016), America Under Siege: Soviet Islam, America Under Siege: Civil War, and Enemies Within the Church (2021).

Co-directed with controversial Iowa pastor Cary Gordon and conspiracy alarmist Trevor Loudon, that last film claimed American churches were being subverted by “cultural Marxism” and “intersectionality” (whatever that means). Even the ultra-conservative Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary president called it “scandalous, scurrilous, slander.”

Saul The Missionary

Saul is the founder and president of Equipping The Persecuted, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit he started in 2020. According to its website, ETP supports persecuted Christians in Nigeria with food, medical aid, and even security equipment. Saul says the story began with a burden placed on his heart: in 2011, his grandfather-in-law, Duane Wessels, invited him on a mission trip to Nigeria. That trip, Saul says, is where he felt called to the lost and persecuted Christians of the Middle Belt.

It is a story designed to move conservative white evangelical Americans, who are primed to respond to the language of calling, sacrifice, and rescue. It probably also moves their wallets

Saul The Journalist

In 2024, Judd Saul launched Truth Nigeria. This media outlet functions as both a journalism operation and a fundraising instrument, its articles invariably directing readers back to Equipping the Persecuted donation pages. The journalistic operation Saul built to document the violence in Nigeria employs Douglas Burton, a former U.S. State Department official, as managing editor of Truth Nigeria. He gets his own section in Part Two of this series.

The 15 journalists listed under the Truth Nigeria banner, when researched, do not all hold up equally well under scrutiny:

Segun Onibiyo, Abuja bureau correspondent, spent 24 days in prison in 2018 on charges of defamation and inciting disturbance against a sitting governor.
Luka Binniyat, described as “award-winning” with 26 years of experience, cannot be linked to a single verifiable award or publication before Truth Nigeria.
Lawrence Zongo, listed as a reporter: a community spokesperson with a disclosed ethnic stake in the conflict.

According to Judd Saul, in May 2025, the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigeria’s primary domestic intelligence agency operating directly under the presidency, arrested Truth Nigeria reporters. However, Saul did not mention any names or provide any evidence or sources that might substantiate his arrest claims. The narrative’s structural function is to create insulation for the organization’s unverifiable intelligence from anyone outside the organization. If the government is suppressing us, then no one can check our work. Convenient, and almost impossible to falsify by design.

Something is not Adding Up!

Finding financial documentation for Judd Saul’s organization was a feat in itself. Still, thanks to the all-seeing eyes of Uncle Sam, we dug up the 2024 Form 990 for Equipping The Persecuted (EIN: 85-2702281), and it tells a very strange story.

The organization is technically insolvent, spending $1.17 for every dollar raised, while Saul, the only compensated officer, collected $60,000. Management costs ballooned 310% over 2023. Only 57 cents of every donated dollar reached actual programming, well below the 75% threshold watchdogs consider the floor of acceptable.

The filings also raise basic operational questions. ETP claims to employ more than 115 Nigerian staff; however, as per it’s 990 filings, there are no employee salaries listed. The organization also claims to serve thousands of Nigerians monthly, operations that require significant ground-level infrastructure. MinistryWatch (a watchdog for evangelical charities) has stripped the organization from its database and issued a transparency grade of D. No independent audit seems to exist online.

Oh, they sell coffee, too! Their ETP Coffee brand, which includes products with names such as Guardian, Refuge, and Warrior, claims 100% of proceeds go to victims of the Christian genocide. But coffee has costs: sourcing, roasting, packaging, shipping, and processing fees. That kind of claim only works if someone else is quietly subsidizing production or if the claim is not true. Neither possibility inspires confidence

All this math makes my head hurt, so enough of that. The picture it paints, however, is difficult to shake: how does an organization that is, on paper, financially insolvent, with over $1 million flowing annually, extreme operational opacity, and unnamed donors, somehow stay afloat and shape U.S. foreign policy outcomes?

There are some intriguing personalities and histories associated with that question.

Let’s meet them!……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

We have an Iowa insurance salesman with no customers, a documentary filmmaker whose own seminary called his work slander, a nonprofit that spends more money than it raises while claiming to employ 115 people it does not pay, and a Liberty University kid in crusader patches screaming at Nigerian villagers to pick up AK-47s. All of them connected. All of them pointing at the same patch of ground. And we have not even gotten to the State Department spook, the CPAC missionary, the congressmen with oil stocks, or the part where Mossad shows up.