U.S President Donald Trump has been given the green light to sanction Nigeria over the killing of Christians.
According to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa chairman, Chris Smith, the killing and persecution of Christians in Nigeria has reached an unprecedented level.
“One of our distinguished witnesses, Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the diocese of Makurdi, Nigeria travelled a long distance to be with and will testify, and this is from his testimony. Militant Fulani herdsmen are terrorists,” Mr Smith said during the hearing on Wednesday.
“They steal and vandalise, they kill and boast about it, they kidnap and rape, and they enjoy total impunity from the elected officials. None of them have been arrested and brought to justice.”
The subcommittee noted that Nigerians constituted 90 per cent of Christians killed worldwide annually, citing a 2024 report by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa showing out of the 55,910 people killed between October 2019 and September 2023, 21,000 of them were abducted in the context of terror groups.
“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.
“Yet, the Government of Nigeria has failed to make progress against religiously motivated persecution of Christians despite religious freedom being enshrined as an essential human right in its Constitution,” the subcommittee noted in their report.
He recommended that Mr Trump should do more to help Christians in Nigeria, including placing the country on CPC designate on Nigeria and urged him to reach out to his Nigerian counterpart Bola Tinubu on the matter.
