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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa Chairman Chris Smith delivered opening remarks at a subcommittee hearing titled, “Conflict and Persecution in Nigeria: The Case for a CPC Designation.”
WATCH HERE
-Remarks-
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.
With an AK-47 pressed to his face, he was asked “are you ready to die as a Christian.”
With extraordinary courage Habila answered, “yes, I am ready to die as a Christian.”
He was asked a second time and he repeated his answer. His wife was pleading- “please don’t kill my husband.” And yet he said, “yes I am ready to die as a Christian.”
This time, the terrorist pulled the trigger. A bullet ripped through Habila’s face. He crumpled to the ground, bleeding profusely, left for dead.
By some miracle, he survived.
I met him in an IDP camp in Jos and asked him to come to Washington to tell his story and at the Congressional hearing is said this to our subcommittee, this subcommittee — “I am alive because God wants you to have this message—knowing Christ” is so much “deeper” than merely knowing Boko Haram’s story of hate and intolerance.
He closed his testimony with this— “do everything you can to end this ruthless religious persecution…but know Christ first.”
To the end, everything he did was to witness, to radiate his love for God. But he was also calling on us to get involved and do something.
Since then, however, the wanton violence against Christians in Nigeria has grown significantly worse.
A couple of days ago, The Pillar reported that “While Christians were receiving ashes last Wednesday to begin Lent, news broke in Nigeria that a priest had been brutally murdered by kidnappers, who had stormed his rectory the night before and kidnapped him…”
“With deep sorrow and righteous indignation, I condemn in the strongest terms the relentless and tragic wave of kidnappings targeting priests, pastoral agents, and the faithful,” Bishop Julius Kundi said in a March 7 press conference which expressed outrage “over the kidnapping and brutal murder” of his priest.
According to sources in the diocese, Father Sylvester was bound by his kidnappers, and he was shot in the head, at close range with an assault rifle, according to officials in his diocese.”
The systematic slaughter and abuse of Nigerian believers must stop.
Delay is denial—and a death sentence to so many.
One of our distinguished witnesses today—Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the diocese of Makurdi, Nigeria— traveled a long distance to be with us today and will testify, and this is from his testimony,” Militant Fulani herdsman are terrorists. They steal and vandalize, 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.”
In December 2020, President Trump designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern only to be reversed without justification by Secretary Blinken in November of 2021.
An I know, I asked him at hearings, I asked him privately, but also asked him at open hearings, why. I never got a good answer.
Religious leaders in Nigeria were outraged by the Secretary’s decision.
One Nigerian Bishop challenged Blinken and said Christian persecution is “more intense than ever.” That was Bishop Mamza.
And Genocide Watch has called Nigeria “a killing field of defenseless Christians.”
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.
Likewise, Nigerian legal framework supports pluralism at both federal and state levels but glaring contradictions exist, especially with laws that criminalize blasphemy—some even carrying the death penalty.
The U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom – UCIRF – was “appalled” that the U.S. Department of State did not redesignate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. USCIRF had recommended – and we have the former chairman here, Tony Perkins – recommended this redesignation four years in a row from 2021 to 2024 and said “[t]here is no justification” as to why the State Department continues to fail to redesignate Nigeria as a CPC.
And, again, CPC as you know carries significant sanctions, a whole broad array of sanctions that the president and the secretary of state are empowered to level on a country that commits persecution.
When the former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held a joint press conference with the Nigerian Foreign Minister on January 23, 2024—following the Christmas Eve massacre when targeted killings by radical Fulani terrorists and took the lives of hundreds of Christians—he did offer his condolences. I watched it. I was glad to see that. But we need to take it beyond just saying ‘I feel sorry for you.”
And these Christmas Eve killings reoccurred the following year—just less than three months ago.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Help can’t come fast enough.
Let’s not forget these terrible horrifying facts:
Northern Nigeria, and this is just Northern Nigeria alone, has seen the destruction of over 18,000 churches since 2009 -18,000 churches. And I saw five of them, completely burned out – and many people killed from car bombs and the like.
An August 2024 report from the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa found that 55,910 people were killed and 21,000 people were abducted in the context of terror groups in Nigeria within just four years from October 2019 to September 2023.
I would point out that approximately 34,000 moderate Muslims have been murdered in Islamist attacks, and we speak out for them as well. I have met with Imams in Nigeria and if they speak, they’re visited that following week by one of these radical Islamist groups. And it’s not pretty, they’ll kill them or do other kinds of mischief.
About 5 million Christians have been displaced and forced into Internally Displaced Persons camps, IDP camps, within Nigeria.
The 2023 Watch List released in January by Open Doors, the interdenominational foundation that supports persecuted Christians in the world, found 89% of Christians martyred worldwide are in one country – Nigeria.
This targeted violence starkly highlights the precarious state of religious freedom in Nigeria. Again, we’re asking President Tinubu, he’s got to take action. And I’m hoping to lead a delegation to Nigeria. We’ve got to raise these issues. But it starts at the top. I’ve been to Abuja many times. The president has real power. He can do it. And we’re calling on him to do that.
Let me also say that, and I’ll put the rest of my statement into the record, this hearing we’re hoping will be a catalyst for action by our own government and also by Congress and of course , above all, the Executive Branch. The new president has a lot to do and I think he’ll do this and then, if necessary, impose sanctions. Where that has happened, there has been change. Where it doesn’t happen, the status quo, the killing fields continue.