Since coming into his second presidential term, U.S. leader, Donald Trump, has been no stranger to issuing sanctions, and Nigeria could be sanctioned soon for the persecution of Christians in the country.
- US Congress authorized a sanction on Nigeria due to killings of Christians in the country
- Chris Smith criticized the Nigerian government for neglecting Christians and mentioned over 55,000 murders and 21,000 kidnappings connected to religious violence
- He accused the Biden administration of removing Nigeria from the list of countries designated as a Country of Particular Concern
Nigeria could be on the receiving end of one said penalty as the United States Congress recently authorized a sanction on Nigeria, given the killings of Christians in the West African country.
Following a congressional hearing on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, Chris Smith, the chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, made the legislative decision public.
During his opening remarks at a subcommittee hearing titled, “Conflict and Persecution in Nigeria: The Case for a CPC Designation,” he mentioned a few case studies where Christians have been persecuted in Nigeria and called to the stop of what he described as religious cleansing.
“Make no mistake, all of these attacks are based on religion, like I said, and diverting attention from it denies what we have seen with our own eyes. This ‘religious cleansing” needs to stop, and the perpetrators be brought to justice,” he said.
Citing a report by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa that showed more than 55,000 murders and 21,000 kidnappings connected to religious violence between 2019 and 2023, Smith criticized the Nigerian government for neglecting Christians.
He also mentioned that from 2009 to the present, more than 18,000 churches have been destroyed in Northern Nigeria alone.
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“And I saw five of them, completely burned out – and many people killed from car bombs and the like,” he said.
Additionally, he accused the former US president, Joe Biden, and his administration of removing Nigeria from the list of countries that Trump had originally designated as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).
“Last year, the House Foreign Affairs adopted my resolution H. Res 82, calling on the Biden Administration to redesignate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern. It passed almost exactly one year ago (Feb 6, 2024) in committee but never came to the floor,” he stated.
According to the Congressman, this issue dates back to the Obama administration, where he had tried to make the government designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization.
“Make no mistake, these ongoing attacks are based on religion and diverting attention from it. Let me just say parenthetically, I tried for three years to get the [Obama] administration to designate Boko Haram as an FTO, as a Foreign Terrorist organization. I held hearing after hearing, and they wouldn’t do it,” he said.
“On the day I was marking up my legislation to do just that, State Department said ‘we’re going to designate them an FTO’ after all the crimes they were committing. Later, it was the Chibok girls; it was all the other atrocities committed by Boko Haram, and they wouldn’t even give them the FTO status so we could start investigating where they get their money, their weapons, and the like,” he added.
Chris Smith, during his remark, expressed confidence in Trump and called for the current administration in Nigeria to take the issue more seriously.
“While I strongly believe that President Trump will again designate Nigeria a CPC—and do much more to assist the persecuted church including outreach to Nigerian President Tinuba—last night I reintroduced the resolution. I hope that we will have a robust discussion and that it will get marked up,” he said.
Chris Smith’s opening remark on killings of Christians in Nigeria
“According to the Catholic News Agency and EWTN News: ‘’Archbishop Ignatius A. Kaigama is concerned over the seemingly endless violence against Christians that claimed at least 58 lives this past weekend and hundreds of others in recent weeks. It is ‘our prayer that something definitive will be done to stop the situation that is inhuman.’
Shockingly, that was more than a dozen years ago and part of my opening remarks at a hearing that I held on July 10, 2012—one of several hearings, eight in all, I chaired on religious persecution in Nigeria—and since then, it has only gotten worse.
One year later, in 2013, I visited Archbishop Kaigama in Jos, Nigeria. We visited churches, five of them, that had been recently firebombed by Boko Haram and spent hours listening to survivors tell their stories.
Despite their numbing loss and pain, I was absolutely amazed at the survivors’ deep faith, courage, and resilience.
They were not going to quit, but they were looking to their government for help, and it was not coming. I also met with an evangelical believer named Habila Adamu. Dragged from his home by Boko Haram terrorists, he was ordered to renounce his faith.”
