Nigeria’s most prominent Muslim organization, the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), blamed “pro-Israeli actors” on Sunday for the growing international alarm at the Christian genocide happening in the country. It further alleged the genocide itself is “fake” contrary to extensive evidence of slaughter and displacement.
NSCIA Secretary-General Ishaq Oloyede claimed that awareness of the Christian genocide was a conspiracy to “distract global attention from the real genocide in Gaza” and alleged that Muslims were being killed in Nigeria due to “environmental collapse” and “criminal opportunism.”
“The so-called genocide narrative is being driven by far-right and pro-Israeli actors. Their aim is to distract global attention from the real genocide in Gaza and to punish Nigeria for standing with justice and international law,” Oloyede told reporters on Sunday, according to the Nigerian newspaper Vanguard. “These lobbyists flood Washington with doctored videos and fake statistics. They quote fabricated figures of Christian deaths and spread religious persecution claims to secure asylum, funding, and attention. This is a betrayal of our nation.”
Oloyede made his accusation in the context of President Donald Trump announcing on October 31 that he would place Nigeria on the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) regarding religious freedom.
“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” President Trump wrote in a message published to his website, Truth Social, on October 31. Trump had initially placed Nigeria on the CPC list during his first term in 2020, but former President Joe Biden removed the country, outraging human rights activists.
The CPC list does not automatically result in the countries identified being sanctioned, but it signals to Congress to pass legislation to address the crisis in the affected country, which often results in sanctions. Several Republican Congressmen have already begun to draft legislation to sanction groups facilitating Christian genocide in Nigeria, including powerful Islamic lobbies, in response to the Trump announcement.
“It is unfortunate that U.S. President Donald Trump and some of his associates have been misled to label our country as a place of religious genocide,” Oloyede, the Muslim leader, said on Sunday. “Such language is dangerous, unfair, and undermines the efforts of a sovereign nation fighting terrorism.”
“There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria,” he falsely repeated. “What we face is a human crisis, not a religious one. Nigeria’s tragedy is rooted in poverty, climate change, and criminality, and we must fight these together, not against each other.”
In reality, two major Islamic threats to Christian communities exist in Nigeria: in the northeast, the jihadist group Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which often exist as one group but has experienced some splintering, and organized Fulani jihadist terrorists in the Middle Belt. Nigeria’s population is only slightly more Muslim than Christian and roughly split into a Muslim north and Christian south, resulting in much of the killing of Christians taking place in the “Middle Belt” region that splits the two.
Contrary to Oloyede, Christian leaders in the Middle Belt have denounced as false and outrageous that alleged “climate change” is a driver of Christian genocide. Speaking to Breitbart News in 2023, Father Remigius Ihyula, who serves the people of Benue state, lamented that Islamic groups covering up the genocide “are very powerful, they have all the monies” and use their influence to mislead the world into thinking the violence “is climate change — I mean for heaven’s sake, climate change is not confined to Nigeria.”
“People in the U.S. are not killing people because there is climate change,” the Father observed. “Neither are people in the U.K. killing people because there is climate change. Only in Nigeria [is it] that people are displaced… in the name of climate change, and nobody wants the truth to be said, and when you say the truth you become a target.”
Targeted violence meant to exterminate indigenous Christian populations, particularly in the Middle Belt and northeast Borno state, have been a reality in Nigeria for over a decade, exacerbated by the lenient rule of Muslim Fulani former President Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari’s hand-picked successor, current President Bola Tinubu, has received some credit for taking action against Boko Haram in the north, but experts largely agree his attitude towards the Fulani jihadists in the heart of the country has been, at best, ineffective at stopping the violence.
“Across Nigeria in recent years, on average there have been 8 violent attacks per day. The Middle Belt, particularly Benue and Plateau state, continues to experience frequent deadly attacks,” Ryan Brown, the CEO of the Christian human rights organization Open Doors, told Breitbart News in remarks published on Monday.
“The evidence of targeted violence against Christians in Nigeria is well documented. In October, the Islamist group connected with ISIS sent a clear message about their intention to target Christians in Africa declaring they must convert or die,” he explained. “Last year alone, 3,100 of the 4,476 Christians killed worldwide for their faith were in Nigeria. Nigeria also leads globally in Christians abducted for faith reasons.”
Tinubu has entirely denied the existence of violence targeting Christians in his country since Trump’s CPC designation.
“The characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality,” Tinubu said in a statement the day after Trump revealed the CPC designation, “nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians.”
Local Nigerian media have documented instances of locals in the Middle Belt accusing the government of threatening to arrest or otherwise silence them if they speak out about the attacks, suggesting that the violence may be even more widespread than that documented.
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