House hearing reveals Nigeria’s deadly violence against Christians
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The U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa held a hearing Thursday on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, which the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., described as “systematic and accelerating violence against predominantly Christian communities in Nigeria.”
Members of both parties questioned administration officials and outside experts as witness after witness described the breakdown of security, massacres, kidnappings and impunity that transformed Africa’s most populous country into what one lawmaker called “the deadliest place in the world for a Christian.”
Smith, who has long sounded the alarm about the persecution of Christians in the country, described the situation in stark terms.
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“Nigeria is ground zero, the focal point of the most brutal and deadly anti-Christian persecution in the world today,” he said.
He called the session a “very critical hearing,” noting that it was his 12th such hearing and that he had led three human rights trips to the country.
Citing earlier testimony from Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Makurdi Diocese, Smith cited militants who “kill and brag about it…kidnap and rape – and enjoy total impunity from elected officials.”
He highlighted the June 13 attack in Yola, saying reports showed that “278 people – men, women and children – were killed in a manner too bloody to describe by people shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they massacred their victims.”
“This is not random violence. This is deliberate persecution,” Smith said. “There may be other factors, but religion is at the root of this phenomenon.”
Smith also noted that moderate Muslims who speak out against extremists are often murdered as well – highlighting, he said, the extent of Nigeria’s “culture of denial.”
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At least 51 Christians have been killed in another attack in Nigeria’s Plateau State. (Reuters)
Rep. Sara Jacobs, Democrat of California, a ranking member of the panel, agreed that Nigeria faces devastating insecurity but warned against “overly simplistic narratives.”
She cited overlapping factors – extremist insurgencies, farmer-herder conflicts and organized banditry – and said the 25 girls recently kidnapped in Kebbi state were all Muslim.
“Violence affects everyone,” she said. “False narratives erase the real drivers of violence and make it harder to find solutions. »
She condemned President Trump’s remarks that he was “going to Nigeria with guns blazing,” calling such rhetoric reckless and illegal, and said unilateral U.S. military action would be “counterproductive.”
Jacobs asserted that the Trump administration removed peacebuilding and conflict prevention tools that once helped reduce violence — programs, she said, “that proactively prevented and directly addressed the violence that now concerns this administration.”
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Women and children held captive by Islamic extremists and rescued by the Nigerian army are seen upon arrival in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Monday, May 20, 2024. Hundreds of hostages, mostly children whose mothers were held captive and forcibly married by Islamic extremists in northeastern Nigeria, have been rescued from their key forest enclave and handed over to authorities, the army said Monday evening this West African country. (AP Photo/Jossy Olatunji)
Rep. John James, Republican of Michigan, described Nigeria’s crisis in stark terms. “This is one of the most serious religious freedom crises in the world,” he said. “The deadliest place in the world to be a Christian.”
He cited estimates that nearly 17,000 Christians have been killed since 2019, calling the killings “a sustained pattern of religiously motivated violence, often ignored or even permitted by the Nigerian government.”
Appearing via video from Benue State, Bishop Wilfred Anagbe detailed church burnings, mass displacements and priests targeted for kidnapping.
“Nigeria remains the deadliest place in the world for Christians,” Anagbe said. “More believers are killed there each year than in the rest of the world combined.”
He thanked the Country of Particular Concern (CCP) for religious freedom violations, but urged that country be supported with sanctions and greater humanitarian support for displaced civilians.
Two senior State Department officials, Jonathan Pratt and Jacob McGee, defended the administration’s approach while acknowledging the horror of the attacks.
Pratt called the situation a “very serious security issue,” saying the United States seeks to “elevate the protection of Christians to the top priority of the Nigerian government.”
McGee added: “The levels of violence and atrocities committed against Christians are appalling…Nigerians are being attacked and killed because of their faith. »
He highlighted blasphemy laws in 12 northern states that can carry the death penalty, calling them “unacceptable in a free and democratic society.”
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December 25, 2011: Onlookers gather around a car destroyed in an explosion next to St. Teresa’s Catholic Church in Madalla, Nigeria, after an explosion ripped through a Catholic church during Christmas mass near Nigeria’s capital. (PA)
The two officials said the United States was developing an action plan to “incentivize and compel” the Nigerian government to protect religious communities.
In an exchange between Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind. and an expert from Nigeria, he ” asked bluntly: “Madam, are we enemies? Are we – what are we?
Oge Onubogu, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, responded: “We are friends.”
She added that engagement between the United States and Nigeria must be “honest” and that Nigerians themselves “recognize that something needs to be done quickly about the levels of insecurity.”
Onubogu, however, warned that a “narrow narrative that reduces Nigeria’s security situation to a single story” could deepen divisions.
Stutzman pressed further, noting: “If the Nigerian government cannot stop the violence, it should be prepared to ask the international community for help.”
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People gather at the scene of a car bomb explosion at the central market in Maiduguri, Nigeria, home of the Boko Haram terrorist group, on July 2, 2014. (AP Photo/Jossy Ola)
As the hearing drew to a close, Smith warned: “The Nigerian government has a constitutional obligation to protect its citizens,” he said. “If it can’t stop the killing, then America – and the world – must not look away.”
