WASHINGTON (OSV News) ─ Nigerian Christians are calling on the US State Department to designate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” in response to violence against predominantly Christian communities there.
More than 100 people were killed and 300 injured in Nigeria’s Plateau State on December 23-24, 2023, in what some media outlets attributed to land clashes between farmers and herders amid ecological changes brought about by the shift climatic. But Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe of Makurdi Diocese in Nigeria’s Benue State told OSV News that the attacks were targeting Christian communities.
“This is a jihad – a purely religious war – a genocide, the elimination of indigenous tribes who are predominantly Christian,” he said.
Bishop Anagbe, a Claretian missionary, said he found it frustrating that violence was sometimes attributed in Western media to climate change and its impact on livestock and agriculture.
“Climate change is a global problem, not just Nigerian,” Archbishop Anagbe said, adding that other conflicts are not considered ecological problems.
At a Jan. 30 event at the Capitol complex in Washington, organized by the pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need, Archbishop Anagbe and other clergy showed graphic images and footage of Christians killed or injured by violence in a region of Nigeria known as the Middle Belt.
Archbishop Anagbe told participants that “gradually and systematically, the voice of Christians is being diminished” in Nigeria.
The International Religious Freedom Act requires the U.S. government to annually designate “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs, defined as countries where governments engage in or tolerate “particularly serious violations” of religious freedom. Non-state actors that engage in similar behavior are designated as “entities of particular concern.”
According to the State Department, when a country is designated as a CCP, Congress is notified and “when non-economic policy options designed to stop particularly serious violations of religious freedom have been reasonably exhausted, a measure economic must generally be imposed.”
Earlier in January, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan federal entity created by Congress to monitor religious freedom abroad, requested a congressional hearing to examine why Nigeria and India do not had not been designated as CPC.
USCIRF Chairman Abraham Cooper and Vice Chairman Frederick A. Davie said in a joint statement on January 4: “There is no justification as to why the Department of State has not singled out Nigeria or India as a country of particular concern, despite its own reports and statements. “.
“USCIRF calls on Congress to convene a public hearing on the State Department’s failure to follow our recommendations,” the joint statement said. “Just days before Christmas, hundreds of Christians were killed in Nigeria, along with their pastor. This is just the latest example of deadly violence against religious communities in Nigeria that even the State Department has condemned. The majority commissioners visited Nigeria and noted the threats to freedom of religion or belief and the deadly implications for religious communities.
Both men added that USCIRF met with the State Department “to sound the alarm” regarding Nigeria and India, “but not all of our recommendations were followed.”
They said: “We will not be deterred and will continue our role as a congressionally mandated watchdog to ensure that the U.S. government prioritizes religious freedom as a key element of U.S. foreign policy. »
In a January 12 letter, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, Representative Bill Huizenga, Republican of Michigan, Subcommittee on Africa Chairman John James, Michigan Republican, among other lawmakers, wrote to the secretary of state. Antony Blinken asks why Nigeria is not on the list.
“Islamic State terrorist groups such as ISIS, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and al-Qaeda perpetuate this senseless violence across Africa,” the lawmakers said. “Across northern and central Nigeria, violent attacks on churches and their congregations are reportedly taking place almost every week. It is clear that the Biden administration must make religiously motivated violence a top priority in its engagement with the government of Nigeria.
Asked at a January 24 press briefing about calls from religious freedom advocates to designate Nigeria as a CCP, Vedant Patel, the State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson, said that “the assessment has been made that the country did not meet the threshold for designation.
“We continue to carefully monitor the religious freedom situation in every country, including of course Nigeria,” Patel said. “And a key part of our diplomacy is collaborating not only with government entities, but also with outside groups, humanitarian organizations and civil society leaders, and we will continue to do so.”
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Kate Scanlon is a national journalist for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @kgscanlon.
