THE $9 MILLION GENOCIDE COVERUP MACHINE
A mystery law office in Kaduna. Roger Stone. A Florida Newsmax columnist. A Washington influence shop caught up in a hacking-for-hire case. A paid “conflict reporter” publishing from the killing fields. And Nuhu Ribadu, whose security operation armed auxiliaries that included Miyetti Allah members before he called terrorists “our brothers.”
By Mike Arnold
Nigeria says it hired DCI Group to tell Washington how well it is protecting Christians.
That is the fraud hiding in plain sight.
Nobody protects Christians by paying lobbyists in Washington $750,000 a month. You protect Christians in Benue, Plateau, Kaduna and Borno. You protect them with soldiers, prosecutions, rescued hostages, secured villages and dead terrorists.
What Nigeria bought in Washington was something else: a machine to convince the people who control sanctions, weapons, aid and diplomatic pressure that the slaughter is being handled—and that the Americans saying otherwise are the problem.
Follow the federal filings and the machine is almost embarrassingly easy to see. $4.5 million goes in. Nearly $1.9 million is already documented going back out through political operatives, PR shops, photographers, event producers, analytics firms and consultants. Roger Stone is on the account. A Newsmax columnist’s company gets $450,000. A “conflict reporter” producing reassuring dispatches from the killing fields gets $54,560. DCI’s Nigeria operation pumps out websites, social media and video selling the government’s story while its social feed attacks the people carrying evidence of genocide to Washington.
This is not Christian protection. It is narrative protection. And the man behind the engagement is National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu.
FOLLOW THE GHOST
The money arrived first.
DCI’s federal filing says it received $4.5 million on December 12, 2025 for the Nigeria account. Five days later, a contract bearing the signatures of DCI managing member Justin Peterson and Nigerian attorney Oyetunji Olalekan Teslim was dated December 17. The price: $750,000 a month, potentially $9 million for the year.
Nigeria didn’t simply hire DCI. The paperwork runs through Aster Legal, Suite 10A, Choice Plaza, Alkali Road, Kaduna, with Teslim signing on behalf of the Nigerian government and Ribadu identified as the government official behind the engagement.
For the intermediary on a $9 million international influence campaign, Aster Legal has an extraordinarily thin public footprint. This isn’t one of Nigeria’s powerhouse firms suddenly opening a Washington front. It is a little-known Kaduna practice that somehow became the paper doorway through which millions of Nigerian government dollars entered one of Washington’s most experienced influence operations.
Why?
That question gets more interesting when you look at Ribadu—not the old Western-media version of Ribadu the heroic anti-corruption cop, but the man running Nigeria’s security apparatus today.
In December 2025, armed men carrying AK-47s were detained in Kwara. The Kwara State Government confirmed they were Miyetti Allah members participating in a federally coordinated security operation connected to Ribadu’s Office of the National Security Adviser.
Ribadu’s apparatus pushed back against the obvious conclusion. It denied arming Miyetti Allah as an organization and explained that Nigeria uses “hybrid forces”—armed hunters, vigilantes and other auxiliaries recruited through authorized security agencies.
Fine. Take them at their word.
The men were Miyetti Allah members. They were armed. They were operating inside a federal security arrangement coordinated through the NSA’s operation. The government’s defense is that they weren’t armed because they were Miyetti Allah; they were armed because they were approved auxiliaries who happened to be Miyetti Allah.
Tell that to a widow in a burned Christian village.
Then Ribadu made it worse.
Speaking about terrorists in Nigeria who supposedly want peace, the country’s National Security Adviser said:
“They are our brothers. We must seek for dialogue and understanding.”
Our brothers.
Those words matter because this is the same government paying Americans $9 million to persuade Washington that it is aggressively protecting Christians from jihadist violence.
And look at the timing. The first $4.5 million hit DCI on December 12, the same month the Miyetti Allah weapons controversy erupted. Nigeria wasn’t merely fighting a security war anymore.
It was fighting a narrative war in Washington.
For that, it went shopping.
WELCOME TO DCI
Nigeria did not choose some sleepy K Street public-affairs boutique. It chose DCI Group, a firm with deep roots in Washington’s tobacco-era influence business and a long history of making paid campaigns look remarkably grassroots.
Energy Transfer hired DCI during the Dakota Access Pipeline fight. DCI helped establish MAIN and GAIN, organizations presented as grassroots infrastructure coalitions. Under oath, an Energy Transfer executive acknowledged that the company funded them and DCI helped set them up.
Grassroots, apparently, is whatever grows after you bury enough money in the soil.
The managing member whose signature appears on Nigeria’s contract is Justin Peterson, a Trump appointee to Puerto Rico’s financial oversight board. Peterson has since surfaced in a much uglier story: a federal hacking-for-hire prosecution involving alleged operations against critics of Exxon and other companies.
Peterson has not been charged with hacking, and DCI denies participating in hacking. Keep that distinction straight. But the Wall Street Journal reported Peterson’s relationship with Israeli private investigator Amit Forlit and a communication in which Peterson told him to “operationalize the research on the bad guys.”
That is the shop Nigeria chose to convince Washington that its critics are the people Americans shouldn’t trust.
Then there is longtime DCI operative Doug Davenport: Bush world, Dole world, former McCain campaign official, Puerto Rico creditor lobbyist and now Nigeria operator. DCI’s own disclosure shows $557,326.51 in Nigeria-related retainers and expenses going to Davenport Ventures.
More than half a million dollars.
And Davenport isn’t even the most recognizable name they hired.
OF COURSE THERE’S A ROGER STONE
On December 18, DCI registered Roger Stone to work on the Nigeria/Aster account.
Yes. That Roger Stone.
Seven felony convictions for obstruction, false statements to Congress and witness tampering. Trump commuted his prison sentence and later pardoned him. Now Stone is a registered foreign agent on the Republic of Nigeria account whose stated mission includes convincing Americans that Nigeria is protecting Christians and combating jihadists.
You couldn’t pitch this script to Netflix. They’d tell you Roger Stone was too on the nose.
His foreign-government work doesn’t stop with Nigeria. Federal filings also connect Stone to DCI work involving Myanmar’s Ministry of Information and the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.
Apparently geopolitical reputation management has become a full-service business.
Then comes Diana London, another Florida operative registered on the Nigeria account. London is a Newsmax columnist, former communications hand for Matt Gaetz and Rep. Lloyd Smucker, co-founder of Ford & London Global Strategies and CEO of a crisis shop actually called The Secret Weapon Agency.
Reality continues to resist parody.
London isn’t some peripheral freelancer. DCI’s sworn disclosure shows $450,000 paid to London Global Strategies during the reporting period. Separately, Africa Confidential identified London as the contractor paying DCI’s fees on behalf of Aster Legal.
So she appears on both sides of an extraordinarily interesting plumbing diagram: reported upstream as a contractor facilitating payments into DCI, while DCI’s own subsequent federal disclosure shows $450,000 flowing back out to London Global Strategies.
Maybe there is a perfectly ordinary contractual explanation. I’d love to hear it.
Now the cast is filling out: Ribadu. Mystery Kaduna intermediary. DCI. Peterson. Davenport. Roger Stone. Diana London.
Then you open the ledger. That’s when it gets really good.
$4.5 MILLION IN. $1.9 MILLION OUT.
DCI had to tell the Justice Department where the money went.
Nigeria put $4.5 million into the operation. During the reporting period, DCI disclosed $1,890,417.60 in Nigeria-related disbursements.
And the receipts are spectacular.
Drake Ventures: $614,193. Davenport Ventures: $557,326.51. London Global Strategies: $450,000. Event Strategies: $199,550.59. Philip Lee Photography / Flip Holsinger: $54,560.
Those five alone account for roughly $1.84 million.
Nobody has to speculate about the plumbing. DCI filed the plumbing diagram with the United States government.
Money enters from Nigeria. It spreads through an American network of political operatives, communications professionals, photographers, event producers and consultants. Out the other side come websites, social media, videos, briefings, Washington access and a steady message: Nigeria is protecting Christians. Nigeria is defeating terrorism. Nigeria is being unfairly maligned. The critics are the problem.
That is the wash cycle.
And then there is the “journalism.”
THE REPORTER IS ON THE INVOICE
Secure Nigeria presents Flip Holsinger as an “award-winning conflict reporter,” sending him into Benue, Kaduna, Bokkos and other areas to produce dispatches showing Nigerian security operations and explaining what is supposedly really happening on the ground.
Turn to DCI’s federal filing and there he is: Philip Lee Photography / Holsinger — $54,560 from the Nigeria influence operation.
Then the timeline gets even better.
On March 3, the filing records another Holsinger payment and expenses. Thirteen days later, the Daily Caller published his piece:
“I Went To Nigeria — Here’s What The Media Gets Wrong.”
His conclusion? What he saw did not match the “singular picture of Christian genocide,” and Nigeria’s current security leadership was mounting what he described as a serious and historic response.
What the article apparently did not tell Daily Caller readers was that its author was being paid through the foreign-principal operation whose job was to persuade Americans of essentially that same proposition.
That doesn’t prove his photographs are fake. It doesn’t prove every word is false. It proves something much simpler: The reporter is on the invoice.
DCI’s filings also connect its Nigeria work to informational materials distributed through SecureNigeria.com and @SecureNigeriaHQ. And the operation doesn’t merely promote the government’s version of events. Its social feed goes after people challenging it—opposition voices, Biafrans, activists and Americans carrying evidence of Christian persecution and genocide into Washington.
Which is where this gets personal.
A review of @SecureNigeriaHQ found Mike Arnold targeted more than any other named American Christian-persecution/genocide activist examined.
There is a reason.
Nigeria invited me to Abuja expecting one kind of press conference. I gave them another. On their stage, in front of their cameras, I laid out names, dates, villages, mass graves and evidence. Nigeria’s Senate went into emergency session that day. The story detonated across the country and internationally. Seventeen days later, President Trump was publicly threatening action over the slaughter of Christians.
Then Nigeria started writing enormous checks in Washington. I don’t have to tell you what that means. Look at what the checks bought.
AND THEN THERE’S TINUBU
All of this ultimately protects one government and one president: Bola Tinubu.
DCI’s Washington job is to make the Tinubu government look like America’s indispensable counterterrorism partner rather than a government presiding over mass slaughter, displacement and jihadist expansion.
But Christian genocide isn’t Tinubu’s only Washington vulnerability. His opponents are also carrying around the 1990s Chicago federal narcotics investigation and forfeiture record—the accounts, the alleged drug proceeds and the money Tinubu ultimately surrendered to the United States.
That file is political dynamite because it collides directly with the image Nigeria is spending millions to build: Tinubu as America’s trusted security partner.
So Washington gets flooded with a much more convenient story. The government is winning. The military is surging. Christians are being protected. Critics are exaggerating. Activists have agendas. Opposition figures are destabilizing the country.
Anybody carrying the bodies into the conversation becomes the problem.
That is what a coverup looks like in 2026. You don’t have to hide every corpse. There are too many phones for that. You flood the information space around the corpse until Americans no longer know what to believe about it.
You manufacture doubt.
THE $9 MILLION QUESTION
Nigeria did not spend $9 million protecting Christians. It spent $9 million convincing Washington that it protects Christians. Those are not remotely the same thing.
The government routed the engagement through an obscure Kaduna law firm. Its National Security Adviser presides over a security apparatus that armed auxiliaries who included Miyetti Allah members, then publicly called terrorists seeking peace “our brothers.” The Washington firm has a history of manufactured grassroots influence. Its managing member has surfaced in a hacking-for-hire prosecution without being charged. Davenport’s firm received $557,326.51. Roger Stone registered on the account. A Newsmax columnist’s company received $450,000. A supposed conflict reporter producing reassuring dispatches from the killing fields turns up in the federal payment ledger for $54,560—and then publishes an American column telling readers the “Christian genocide” picture is wrong without disclosing that financial relationship.
Nearly $1.9 million moved through the influence apparatus in a matter of months.
Meanwhile villages still burn, Christians still die, families are still displaced, children are still kidnapped, and Americans carrying that evidence to Washington are attacked by the operation being paid to tell Washington how seriously Nigeria takes the problem.
So spare me the “Christian protection” language. The Christians aren’t what the $9 million protects. Tinubu is.
Follow the Kaduna suite. Follow the FARA forms. Follow the $4.5 million in. Follow the $1.9 million back out. Follow Roger Stone. Follow Diana London. Follow the reporter on the invoice. Follow who gets access to Washington—and then follow who gets attacked for contradicting them.
There is your genocide coverup machine.
The rest is the disclaimer at the bottom of the email.
#EarthShaker