The Hell for Christians in Nigeria

             Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, with an estimated 219,463,862 inhabitants.  There are more than 250 ethnic groups.  Muslims comprise 53.5 percent of the Nigerian people, and Christians of all sects comprise 45.9 percent.  One would think that such a nearly balanced religious mix would be less fractious, but you would be wrong.  There is now, and has been for some time, an active jihad against Nigerian Christians that has never been given the effective attention and action it deserves from our government despite Congressional hearings, State Department cautionary statements and many articles and broadcast reports in various media in the United States and elsewhere.

            According to a recent Christian Solidarity International (CSI) report, persecution of Christians has been unabated over the past few years:

“From January 2012 to June 2015, Boko Haram and other extremists murdered over 5,000 Christians in Nigeria. Hundreds of thousands of Christians fled their homes in northern Nigeria for safer, Christian-majority regions, such as Enugu, in the southeast. Many refugees we have met ran for their lives as Boko Haram was attacking, carrying nothing but their children and the clothes they were wearing,” the CSI report stated.

The number of Christians killed in the first 200 days of this year are only a few dozen less than the acknowledged total for all of 2020.  At least 3,462 Christians, including ten priests or pastors, were murdered in Nigeria in the first 200 days of this year.  According to the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, a Nigerian human rights group, the number of unarmed Christians who were murdered by members of the Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram or other Jihadist groups averaged 17 Christians a day murdered for reasons related to their faith in the first half of 2020, the second highest daily average since 2014, when more than 5,000 Christian deaths were recorded in the hands of Boko Haram and jihadist Fulani herdsmen.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau was casual in his listing of his group’s targets.

“We hardly touch anybody except security personnel and Christians and those who have betrayed us,” he was quoted as saying.

The reign of terror on Christians in Nigeria has landed the country on notorious top 10 lists kept by For the Martyrs, an organization tracking persecution of Christians worldwide.  This group lists Nigeria on the top 10 lists of countries where Christians face the most violence, where the most Christians are martyred and where the most churches are attacked or closed.

Moreover, some 3,000 Christians, many of them young girls and women, have been kidnapped by Islamic terrorists, and their whereabouts largely remain unknown, the Nigerian group states. The people behind the report estimate, extrapolating from previous cases, that at least three out of every ten kidnapped Christians have been killed.  Even if they are not killed, past experience with the extremist kidnappers reveals that they often forcibly convert Christian girls to Islam and even marry them to their fighters against their will.  Shekau said he considered any women not participating in jihad with his group to be infidels who can be legitimately abducted and enslaved.

The most famous kidnapping case was the 2014 kidnapping by Boko Haram of 276 mostly Christian female students aged from 16 to 18 from the town of Chibok in Bornu State.  There were 57 girls who escaped from the trucks transporting them from their school, and others were rescued by Nigerian armed forces at various times.  A month after the original kidnapping, Boko Haram declared the girls “slaves.”  By 2019, there were at least 700 Nigerian females in Boko Haram custody.

I have been in churches attacked by Boko Haram and met with Nigerians who were victims of Boko Haram violence – parents whose children were killed or kidnapped, released Chibok girls and people who survived attacks by Boko Haram and other extremist groups in Nigeria.  When I was Staff Director of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, then-Subcommittee Chairman Chris Smith held several hearings on anti-Christian violence in Nigeria.  Witnesses included Christian religious leaders, representatives from Nigerian organizations assisting victims, released Chibok girls and one man who told a particularly poignant story of his encounter with Muslim extremists.

One night in November 2012, Habila Adamu said he saw men in robes carrying AK-47 rifles enter his village and knew they were not soldiers.  Adamu told us the men burst into his home and challenged him first on whether he was a police officer or soldier.  He told them he wasn’t.  He said they told him they were there to do the work of Allah and asked him if he was Muslim.  He told them he was a Christian.  When they asked him if he would convert to Islam, he refused, and before they could ask again, he was shot in the side of the face.  The wound was so bad, the doctor who first saw him didn’t think anything could be done to save him, but fortunately, that doctor was wrong.

In Nigeria and back in the United States, Rep. Smith and I met with many victims of Boko Haram violence.  Unfortunately, the Government of Nigeria hasn’t been very helpful in ending the Boko Haram threat.  Despite weaponry. military training and U.S. intelligence given to the Nigerian security forces, they failed to connect with each other and share what each knew.  One would have names, and the other would have addresses, but they would only talk to U.S. officials – certainly not an effective way to end this deadly threat.  

One member of the Nigerian commission established to address the Boko Haram threat told us that one time a Boko Haram representative, under the white flag of truce, came into their offices to discuss a cease-fire.  However, when he left, Nigerian security forces followed him and attacked, killing him and others, reportedly including family members.

Miyetti Allah, the umbrella group for Fulani herdsmen, has been accused of importing extremist Muslims who have sparked numerous conflicts with Christian farmers along the cattle trail from Niger.  Its supporters include powerful people such as the Sultan of Sokoto.  The Nigerian herder-farmer conflicts were exacerbated over the years by the changes in state borders and boundaries of farmlands, but also by the impact of religion, especially the successful proselytization by Christians and Muslims.  Nevertheless, neither the federal government nor any state governments have taken effective, affirmative action to protect citizens and find ways to accommodate herders and farmers.  Nigerians legitimately need the meat, milk and hides provided by herders, but Nigerian farmers have land rights that must be protected.  It doesn’t have to be either or; it just seems that way now.

Those of us who have monitored this situation over the past several years fail to see how this hasn’t become a bigger issue for successive U.S. governments.  This is a genocide happening over a prolonged period, often in small numbers at a time.  Does that make it less of a genocide if it happens in small stages?  Ask Habila Adamu and the released Chibok girls if they think this is less of a genocide.

Some action needs to be taken against those who aid and abet terrorists killing Christians in Nigeria.  That’s why we have the Magnitsky Act sanctions.  There are enough reports of federal and state officials providing aid of some kind to these vicious murderers or at least refusing to do their job of protecting Nigerian citizens.  It is way past time for the United States and others in the international community to use whatever means at our disposal to help end this situation, which has made Nigeria perhaps the most dangerous place on Earth to be a Christian.