YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – There are growing calls for the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to reinstate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern,” which means it has engaged in or tolerated “particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
In 2021, the Biden administration defied all expectations and failed to re-designate Nigeria in the category.
Critics, including human rights advocates, expressed disappointment, citing ongoing religious persecution in Nigeria, particularly against Christians.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said at the time that it was “disappointed” at the decision to treat Nigeria as if it was “a country with no severe religious freedom violations.”
Now, with Trump back in the White House, groups fighting for human rights and religious freedoms are pushing for a roll back of the Biden administration’s decision.
“We wish to inform the Rt. Hon. Secretary of State [Marco Rubio] that the same old order of oppression, persecution, kidnapping, maiming and mass killing of Nigerian Christians by the roguish Nigerian Muslim leadership through their armed Bandit, Armed Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram and ISWAP still exists with unimaginable impunity,” sates a petition from the International Coalition against Christian Genocide in Nigeria (ICAC-GEN) – a United States registered non-profit 501(c) advocacy group.
The petition claims that “since the inception of these acts of Muslim terrorism in Nigeria which involved mass killings, kidnapping for ransom, and displacement of Indigenous people from their ancestral homes, no single terrorist has been brought before the court of law for trial. And since there has been no trial, there has also not been any conviction for terrorism against all the terrorists captured by Government troops. “
It blasts the Nigerian government for claiming to be fighting the terrorists and at the same time “rehabilitating the captured terrorists, most who eventually return to their old base of terrorism.”
“There is therefore no better way to describe this program of rehabilitation of murderers than an obnoxious Government policy of collaboration with the same terrorists. Why should the same terrorists not be emboldened to continue their heinous crimes against the Nigerian Christian population with unbridled impunity if it has been made clear to them that capture means freedom from prosecution for their crimes?”
The petition was signed by the President of the International Coalition against Christian Genocide in Nigeria, Dr. Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe.
It notes that coupled with “the unimaginable Islamic terrorism tormenting Nigerian Christians,” the Tinubu administration “has dramatically turned Nigerian Christians into inconsequential minorities … through alienation in political appointments.”
It cited the Nigerian military as an example of such alienation, indicating that Christians occupy only 7 positions while Muslims have been given 22 positions as Heads of Nigerian Security Agencies. Of a total of 48 ministers, Christians occupy only seven positions, it also notes.
Emeka Umeagbalasi is the Board Chair of the Catholic-Inspired NGO, International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Intersociety. He says the Nigerian military has been complicit in the killing of Christians.
“If Nigeria’s security forces had decisively tackled their law enforcement responsibilities with impartiality, fairness, and equity—steering clear of bias—all the challenges Christians are facing today would have been a thing of the past,” he told Crux.
He said more than 50,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009, when Boko Haram insurgents began its murderous campaign in the country. Millions more have been displaced.
In the latest appeal to the U.S. government, Nwaezeigwe argues that part of the persecution of Christians has been what he considers as the manipulation of population figures to give the impression that Muslims have a larger share of Nigeria’s 220 million people.
Various sources suggest that the two religions are virtually evenly distributed, with the Muslims dominating the northern regions while Christians mostly populate the southern regions.
The petitioners disagree with the United States of America State Department 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom with reference to Nigeria in which the percentage of Christian population was put at 48.1 percent and that of Muslims at 50 percent.
The petition says those numbers were based “on the outdated 2015 Pew Research Center Report.”
“We wish to emphasize that the stated population ratio between Christians and Muslims has neither empirical nor accurate estimated basis,” the petition states, explaining that respective governments in Nigeria had manipulated population figures to give Muslims an edge, both as a project for Islamization, and as a tool for fraud during elections.
As if to assure themselves that their petition will receive a positive response, the ICAC-GEN poured praise on Trump, citing the actions he took during his first term in office.
In 2018, President Trump confronted then Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, over the killing of Christians in Nigeria.
“Also, we’ve had very serious problems with Christians who have been murdered, killed in Nigeria. We are going to be working on that problem very, very hard, because we can’t allow that to happen,” Trump told Buhari at the time.
