PREMIUM TIMES EDITORIAL
The US Congress is being pressured by some human rights watchers and Christian faith leaders to designate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) by the Trump administration due to an alleged genocide being committed against Christians in the country. This “Christian genocide” narrative is false, divisive and misleading. It should not be allowed to prevail, as it has baleful diplomatic repercussions.
Countries with the CPC tag are those in which their authorities orchestrate severe violations of citizens’ religious freedom or deny them other personal liberties. But no such authoritarian indulgence exists in Nigeria, to warrant a pariah tar. The official picture is as President Bola Tinubu declared, “No faith is under siege.”
In Mr Moore’s perspective, “Christians are being persecuted and killed for professing their faith in our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.” As such, on 5 October, he wrote to the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, requesting that action be taken on the basis of this claim. Thereafter, on 15 October a petition signed by 30 Christian leaders was presented to the House of Representatives for legislative action, towards the realisation of the CPC-designation agenda.
The claim of 20,000 churches being destroyed since 2009, and 7,000 Christians killed so far under the President Bola Tinubu regime, is being bandied about by this coalition of anti-genocide Americans for Nigerian Christians, without evidence and without putting these within their proper contexts.
Mr Trump, who had blacklisted Nigeria among the CPC horde in November 2020, during his first term in office, seems well disposed to restore the country to that status, after President Joe Biden’s administration had delisted it in 2021. Mr Trump’s strong message of the intolerance of the repression of Christians anywhere in the world since January this year, speaks volumes. His Special Adviser on Arab/African Affairs, Mossad Boulus’ recent visit to President Tinubu, left no one in doubt of his intentions.
However, that mission must have turned out to be a disappointment for him, with Mr Boulus’ dismissal of the christian genocide conspiracy theory after meeting with Mr Tinubu. In fact, he declared, though arguably, that more Muslims have been killed than Christians in these mass murders. This is not to say that Christians are not being killed in Nigeria. They are. The reality, however, is that Muslims are also being killed in large numbers. In August, for example, bandits invaded a mosque in Katsina and killed 13 worshippers. In Zamfara, Sokoto and other states in the North-west, this pattern of carnage is routine.
Obviously, Nigeria got enmeshed in this genocide perception under the Muhammadu Buhari regime, when Mr Trump blacklisted the country for its incredible aloofness to the egregious killings by AK-47-bearing Fulani herders, whose rampages barely attracted serious official sanctions. While they strutted across every nook and cranny of the country, the Benue and Plateau communities, which are predominantly Christian, were particularly under their vice-like grip.
These impunities, which helped in framing the genocide narrative, sit within the broader framework of the criminal activities of non-state actors such as Boko Haram, ISWAP, kidnappers, bandits, killer-herders, separatist agitators, and other regional militant groups. Their victims cut across all ethnic and sectarian lines in the country. Moreover, women and children were not spared from their wide-ranging violence either.