- (Advisory: The petition below was sent to The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USIRF) Chair Abraham Cooper and is dedicated to the memories of Pastor Ayuba, Mr Maina and another young Chadian citizen among the six slain at a COCIN Church attack this week. It is also dedicated to Yobe IDP and widow Yagana whom Abe Cooper Chad met during a visit to Nigeria.)
Dear Chairman Abe Cooper,
I write to commend your statement calling for a congressional investigation into the failure of the State Department to designate Nigeria for egregious religious persecution, yet again, which is official misconduct, executive lawlessness, and diplomatic malpractice.
The US State Department list of countries with Religious Freedom violations omitted Nigeria, which research shows has been the deadliest country in the world for Christians for 12 out of the last 13 years. Nigeria is suspiciously and conspicuously absent from the entire State Department rankings, on which it has consistently appeared for 20 years prior to President Biden’s administration.
In 2020, Nigeria attained the highest violator group of Country of Particular Concern (CPC) but since then mysteriously disappeared, not because conditions improved in Nigeria like Sudan, but because of a change in US administration.
The action of the State Department is the height of deceit, deception, and intellectual dishonesty. It didn’t simply move the goal post mid play but stole the ballots and ran off!
Secretary Blinken has introduced a new level of diplomatic fraud that is befuddling and tragically reminiscent of Holocaust-denial and more recently “election-denial.”
Unable to face the reality and overwhelming evidence of religious persecution in Nigeria, the state department took the cowardly option of simply hiding the ball!
This situation is alarming because very recent history shows such policy fraud will be exposed and secondly it has dire consequences.
Secretary Clinton rebuffed multiple entreaties from us in the human rights and religious freedom community and even US agencies to designate top global terror group Boko Haram a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” – now recognized as one of her signal failings in office.
Secretary Blinken has done worse than Clinton by both ignoring evidence and rigging the report.
Secretary Blinken has literally and illegally suspended the consideration of Nigeria as required by him under the IRFA (Frank Wolf’s Law.)
The travesty is that he continues to do this despite ordering the evacuation of most American diplomats and their families out of Abuja due to islamists’ failed attempt to blow up American diplomats’ homes in Nigeria. American Diplomats only returned to Abuja last year.
As such the State Department’s State of Denial has continued to claim the lives of Nigerians endlessly and threatens the lives of Americans needlessly as well. Like Dr. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere!”
The US continuously fails to acknowledge that
on average, a Christian is killed every two hours, making it the deadliest country for Christians on the planet. As fellow Presidential award winning humanitarian Dr. Devlin stated in Nigeria last week when the Christmas massacres occurred,
“Very few things on the planet show America’s betrayal of the present day martyrs of the Christian faith than the inaction, non-recognition and in fact, active suppression of the harsh reality of death, death and more death in Nigeria.” Ironically we were in Nigeria commemorating the 12th anniversary of a Christmas Day church bombing.
Just today, our network of terrorism survivors notified us that, “There is attack on cocin church gaidam that killed six members including the pastor of the church at gaidam yobe state… the burn the church and pastor,s house and also one member house too.” Thus apart from the Christmas 2023 attacks that killed hundreds in 30 Plateau state villages and the attack on a southeast Catholic Church killing three, we now have a 2024 northeast church attack killing at least six Christians – all within a week spread across half of Nigeria’s six regions!
Your request for a congressional inquiry into this is all the more crucial because of the problematic, faulty, and false State Dept narrative that this is a “clash”, “competition over resources” and consequence of “climate change.”
Not only does the Denial State of the State Department exacerbate the deaths but rather than help victims in Nigeria’s middlebelt, the US has misspent countless taxpayer monies on nebulous conferences and projects re-educating Nigerian journalists not to report religious conflict and training police to protect gay rights while actively stigmatizing, intimidating and sidelining religious freedom advocates.
In fact, a year ago, the US Institute of Peace, an adjunct of the State Department physically assaulted and threw out a Nigerian American lawyer for wearing a commemorative “Leah T-shirt” in honor of a teenage Christian schoolgirl captive by Boko Haram for years.
Finally, these disgraceful US actions disrespect all the martyrs of religious persecution, those imprisoned, raped, and otherwise, and it is especially a disservice to American humanitarians like you who have risked your lives to travel to Nigeria and to speak truth to power.
In conclusion, I wish to dedicate this advocacy letter to the Pastor and his members killed in COCIN Church Gaidam this week (including two Chadian citizens) plus other Nigerian victims but most especially to a widow you met in Nigeria during your 2020 visit.
- Emmanuel Ogebe, Esq, is a prominent US-based international human rights lawyer and Nigeria pro-democracy advocate with the US NIGERIA LAW GROUP in Washington DC. His advocacy led to the naming of Kudirat corner by Nigeria house in New York after the pro-democracy icon Kudirat Abiola assassinated over the June 12 election annulment and the U.S. designation of Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor’s determination of crimes against humanity in Nigeria amongst others.
