Calls on US government to re-designate Nigeria as a country of particular concern
On Mar 12, United States Representative Chris Smith, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, held a congressional hearing on the ongoing religious freedom violations in Nigeria. During the event, expert witnesses joined in Smith’s appeal to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to redesignate Africa’s most populous nation as a “Country of Particular Concern,” a designation President Trump used in his first term to help persecuted Christians in Nigeria.
In his opening statement, Rep Smith pointed out that during a similar hearing in 2012 he testified about the targeting of Christians. “…since then it has only gotten worse,” he stated.
In his statement, Rep Smith pointed to a 2023 Vatican report that 18,000 churches have been destroyed since 2009 in Islamist [sic] militant attacks. He also pointed to an Aug 2024 report by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa that found that 55,910 people were killed and 21,000 people were abducted in the context of terror groups in Nigeria between Oct 2019 to Sep 2023.
During the hearing Bishop Wilfred Anagbe also testified. “A long-term, Islamic agenda to homogenize the population has been implemented, over several presidencies, through a strategy to reduce and eventually eliminate the Christian identity of half of the population. This strategy includes both violent and non-violent actions, such as the exclusion of Christians from positions of power, the abduction of Church members, the raping of women, the killing and expulsion of Christians, the destruction of churches and farmlands of Christian farmers, followed by the occupation of such lands by Fulani herders. All of this takes place without government interference or reprisals,” he explained.
The bishop called the events in Nigeria a “religious war”.
“Like in the past, many jihadists are motivated less by religion than by the spoils of war, and use their religion to impose themselves. In my diocese, the spoils consist mainly of fertile, well-tended land organized around a parish. The jihadists come and abduct and kill the priests, leaving thousands without support and basic human services.”
“The Makurdi Diocese in Benue State has been the epicentre of the invasion by these herders, who are more like ‘hired guns’ of cattle oligarchs, who manipulate religion to rally the herders to eliminate the Christian population, and cleanse the land in the name of Islam,” he continued. “They follow orders to conquer, kill, and occupy. They attack even those who have managed to escape into our IDPs’ camps.”
He added: “What I have recounted above is happening not only in Benue State. I believe our experience in Benue is symptomatic of what is happening elsewhere in large parts of Nigeria.
“Today, I urge you all to use every means within your mandate to start developing a strong and good relationship with Nigeria, where you know that when you speak of human dignity, we are also speaking of the same God-given right you believe is ‘unalienable’. Consider that Nigeria can be your ally, but it cannot be one where half the population is in the process of being murderously eliminated. Work with us, the churches, and other Nigerians of good will. We are working for a peaceful and prosperous society. And our desperate plight has been set aside in U.S. foreign policy for too long, to the cost of thousands of lives. Concretely, I ask you to re-designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. This has both a practical and diplomatic meaning, to signal that you are paying attention to what happens to us.
“Second, I urge the United States to condition any cooperation on the return of the IDPs to their ancestral homes and help for them to rebuild their lives. I implore this august body to insist on the return and rehabilitation of all IDPs to their ancestral lands, and NOT to relocate them to other constructed camps elsewhere, which is an invented solution now being pushed the Benue state governor.”
Nina Shea, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute quoted findings by Open Doors: “In recent years, more Christians have been killed for their faith in Nigeria than all other places combined.”
She further stated that “the Federal Government in Abuja remains passive in the face of desperate cries for help and detailed reports of relentless horrific violence coming from Middle Belt citizens and their elected officials, church leaders, journalists, and Nigerian and international human rights groups.”
Shea also raised concern over the government’s failure to prevent violence to continue with impunity. “The targeted indigenous people of the Middle Belt Christian communities are said to be facing two devastating challenges: constant attacks by Fulani militants and the Nigerian government’s decision to tolerate this persecution…. Nigeria’s government has not undertaken a thorough, objective and transparent investigation of the militant Fulani herders’ organization, leadership, motives or intent in these attacks.”
Also testifying was Ms Oge Onubogu, director of the Africa program at the Wilson centre. “We know that violence has increased in Nigeria…. whether labelled as banditry, or terrorism or communal clashes or ethnoreligious conflict, at the root of this violence is a failure of governance to meet the population’s most basic needs, not only livelihoods, education and healthcare, but also their need for perpetrators to be held legitimately accountable.”
In December 2020, President Trump designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, but the designation was reversed by Secretary Blinken, in November of 2021. The U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended redesignation four years in a row from 2021 to 2024.
Last year the House Foreign Affairs adopted a resolution urgently calling on the Biden Administration to redesignate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern. It passed on Feb 6, 2024 in committee, but never came to the floor.
“While I strongly believe that President Trump will again designate Nigeria a CPC — and do much more to assist the persecuted church including outreach to Nigerian President Bola Tinuba [sic] —last night I reintroduced the resolution. Help can’t come fast enough.”
