Christianity Today
U.S. Must Acknowledge and Address Religious Persecution in Nigeria
Nigeria promotes and tolerates persecution of Christians by Muslims – and the U.S. State Department looks away.
Last month in Nigeria, Christians were confronted with yet another reminder of the ongoing threats they face in their own communities. In August, “more than 70 Nigerian Christians were killed and another 20 Christian medical students were kidnapped in separate violent attacks in the southeastern Nigerian state of Benue.”
Nigeria gives free rein to Muslims against Christians
Violent Islamists such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) continue to terrorize populations in northern Nigeria. According to a detailed report released just days ago, armed Fulani herdsmen and other terrorists and militia groups are responsible for the majority of attacks in Nigeria’s Middle Belt communities, where shocking levels of violence have persisted for years. These Fulani militants account for far more attacks against Christians (and Muslims) than either of the more prominent Boko Haram and ISWAP. Conditions on the ground are admittedly complicated by the range of malicious actors at play.
Further aggravating the situation for Nigerian Christians, there are sharia courts in more than a dozen provinces that oppose equal rights and due process for religious minorities, as well as blasphemy laws enshrined in Nigeria’s criminal and sharia codes.
Over the last decade, Islamist extremists have killed approximately 4,000 Christians annually. The figures for Nigeria in just the last couple of years are staggering. In 2022, more than 5,000 Nigerian Christians were killed, and more than 3,000 kidnapped. In 2023, as many as 8,000 Nigerian Christians lost their lives to this scourge of violence.
Trump v. Biden
The Trump administration designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for the first time in 2020. A year later, the Biden Administration announced Nigeria’s removal from the CPC list and has yet to redesignate it. Congressman Chris Smith, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and others have insisted that Nigeria must again be added to the list.
In a statement to RealClearPolitics early last year, a State Department spokesperson explained, “After careful review, the secretary has assessed that Nigeria does not meet the legal threshold for designation under the International Religious Freedom Act.” According to RCP, the spokesperson also noted that the Department of State had redesignated two terrorist organizations within Nigeria – Boko Haram and ISWAP – as “Entities of Particular Concern” (EPCs). The State Department also declared them foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.
The International Religious Freedom Act (1998) mandates the president (now delegated to the secretary of state), on an annual basis, to designate as CPCs countries with governments that have engaged in or tolerated “particularly severe” religious freedom violations. The law defines particularly severe religious freedom violations as “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations, including “torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; prolonged detention without charges; causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction or clandestine detention of those persons; or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons.”
Ambivalence toward Nigeria
The Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act (2016) added the Special Watch List (SWL) and EPC categories. Undoubtedly, the State Department has rightly designated violent Islamist groups Boko Haram and ISWAP as EPCs. State’s failure for three consecutive years to redesignate Nigeria as a CPC, however, is indefensible. It also misses a critical part of the picture by omitting the armed Fulani groups.
Secretary Antony Blinken last announced the State Department’s CPC list on Dec. 29, 2023. Leaving aside Nigeria’s blasphemy laws as well as its sharia courts, it seems impossible to argue that Nigeria has not, at the very least, tolerated “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedom within its borders. The Nigerian government has failed to prevent Islamist extremists from killing thousands of Christians each year, going back at least a decade. Such appalling levels of violence against a particular religious community over an extended period of time can only be characterized as “systematic, ongoing, and egregious.”
Options under federal law
U.S. federal law provides a number of options for the United States to respond to countries designated as a CPC. The secretary of state may negotiate a bilateral agreement intended to bring an end to the offending country’s violations; impose various levels of punitive sanctions; take other commensurate actions (e.g., declaring that pre-existing sanctions against a CPC also apply in this context); or issue a waiver. Note, however, that the Frank Wolf Act of 2016 provides that the ongoing use of waivers fails to fulfill the purpose of the statute.
While the State Department has been reluctant across administrations to use the legal tools at its disposal to induce CPCs to change course, the tools themselves can still be put to effective use. This is why America’s failure to redesignate Nigeria as a CPC, thereby restricting access to these additional policy options, is so baffling and troubling. The United States hasn’t even been willing to add it to the Special Watch List.
“Particular concern” is not enough
Designating the more notorious of the non-state Islamist groups committing these atrocities as EPCs is important but is woefully inadequate. And not just because the armed Fulani groups are worse offenders numerically. The State Department has named Boko Haram and ISWAP as EPCs going back to 2020. This means that U.S. leaders during both the Trump and Biden administrations have recognized them to be violent actors “engaged in particularly severe violations of religious freedom.” Yet, the Nigerian government has permitted them to continue to perpetrate violent atrocities and killings against Christians and a significant number of Muslims with impunity. That toleration alone means that Nigeria more than meets the CPC criteria. This administration, and the next, must no longer look away.
The United States should exercise strong leadership, restoring Nigeria’s CPC designation and investigating the actors responsible for and complicit with these severe violations of religious freedom. Naming Boko Haram and ISWAP as EPCs is a key admission by the United States. Nigeria’s neglect of its Christian population in the face of these and other groups that share their malicious ideology constitutes more than sufficient grounds for America to take decisive diplomatic action to confront the Nigerian government.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
David Trimble serves as president of the Religious Freedom Institute.
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