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By Office of Obtain. Chris Smith
Washington, DC — Nigerian Christians focused, massacred totally consequently of of their religion.
U.S. Obtain. Chris Smith (NJ-04), chairman of the Home Foreign places Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, held a congressional hearing on the continuing non secular freedom violations in Nigeria. Professional witnesses joined in Smith’s charm to Secretary Marco Rubio to redesignate Africa’s most populous nation as a “Country of Explicit Challenge,” a designation President Trump vulnerable in his first time duration to aid persecuted Christians in Nigeria.
“One of our renowned witnesses – Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the diocese of Makurdi, Nigeria – will testify as we articulate that ‘Militant Fulani herdsman are terrorists. They steal and vandalize, they cancel and boast about it, they kidnap and rape, and so that they expertise total impunity from the elected officials. None of them had been arrested and introduced to justice.’ – Chairman Smith opening the hearing.
“In December 2020, President Trump designated Nigeria a Country of Explicit Challenge perfect to be reversed with out justification by Secretary Blinken in November of 2021,” Smith mentioned. “Religious leaders in Nigeria had been outraged by Sec. Blinken’s decision.”
Smith – who’s the author of the Frank R. Wolf Global Religious Freedom Act (P.L. 114-281), which expressed that governments must in the waste be held chargeable for the abuses that occur in their territories – mentioned “the Govt of Nigeria has didn’t earn growth against religiously motivated persecution of Christians despite non secular freedom being enshrined as an very critical human honest in its Constitution.”
“Genocide Survey has called Nigeria “a killing field of defenseless Christians,” Smith mentioned. He renowned that over 52,000 Christians in Nigeria bear reportedly been focused and killed by Islamist extremist while roughly 34,000 common non-Fulani Muslims had been murdered in Islamist attacks, since 2009. The focused violence has forced about 5 million Nigerians – mostly Christians – into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps within Nigeria and in refugee camps at regional and sub-regional borders.
Click right here to learn Chairman Smith’s opening assertion.
Final year the Home Foreign places Affairs Committee adopted Smith’s decision H. Res. 82 urgently calling on the Biden Administration to redesignate Nigeria a Country of Explicit Challenge. It passed on Feb. 6, 2024 in committee but never came to the Home floor. On March 11, 2025, Smith reintroduced his laws which is now H.Res. 220.
“Whereas I strongly imagine that President Trump will again designate Nigeria a CPC – and discontinue remarkable extra to aid the persecuted church alongside side outreach to Nigerian President Bola Tinuba – final evening I reintroduced the decision,” Smith mentioned. “Support can’t approach instant sufficient.”
Testifying at the Home hearing, entitled “War and Persecution in Nigeria: The Case for a CPC Designation,” had been witnesses: Nina Shea, Senior Fellow and Director of the Heart for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute; Tony Perkins, Historical Chair of the U.S. Commission on Global Religious Freedom and now President of Family Be taught Council; Bishop Wilfred Anagbe, Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Makurdi, Nigeria, and; Oge Onubogu , Director of the Africa Program at The Wilson Heart.
Bishop Wilfred Anagbe testified: “A protracted-time duration, Islamic agenda to homogenize the population has been applied, over several presidencies, thru a methodology to diminish and indirectly set up away with the Christian identification of half of of the population. This technique entails both violent and non-violent actions, corresponding to the exclusion of Christians from positions of energy, the abduction of Church contributors, the raping of girls, the killing and expulsion of Christians, the destruction of church buildings and farmlands of Christian farmers, adopted by the occupation of such lands by Fulani herders. All of this takes space with out authorities interference or reprisals.” (Click right here to learn Bishop Anagbe’s remarks.)
Director Shea, instructed the Home panel: “Nigeria is a nation of superlatives — Africa’s most populous nation, its greatest financial system and, alarmingly, the entire world’s deadliest nation for Christians. In most traditional years, extra Christians had been killed for his or her religion in Nigeria than all diversified areas combined, experiences the revered research neighborhood Begin Doorways. Currently, militant teams of nomadic Fulani Muslim herders are reported to be basically the most attention-grabbing risk to Nigeria’s Christians, severely these in Heart Belt farming communities. That central assign is the intersection of Nigeria’s mostly Muslim North with its mostly Christian South.” (Click right here to learn Ms. Shea’s remarks.)
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Tony Perkins, Historical Chair of the U.S. Commission on Global Religious Freedom, testified: “As a ancient USCIRF chair, I will be succesful of study that many Western news retail outlets, taking their cues from the outdated administration, proceed to miss the accelerating violence and bloodshed in the period in-between taking space in Africa, which is perpetrated basically by radical Islamist teams. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, vicious attacks and bloodshed proceed to surge, week after week, month after month. Christians are the principle targets of this terrorism, facing murders, rapes, kidnappings, and valid threats.” (Click right here to learn Mr. Perkin’s remarks.)
