CV NEWS FEED // Representative Chris Smith, R-N.J., asked Congress in a March 12 hearing to redesignate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC). Christians in the country continue to experience violence and threats posed by Muslim extremists.
A press release from Smith reports that President Donald Trump had designated Nigeria as a CPC in 2020; however, in 2021, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken removed the designation. Smith stated that Nigerian religious leaders were “outraged” by Blinken’s decision.
Smith proposed House Resolution 82 last year to redesignate Nigeria as a CPC. The House Foreign Affairs Committee passed it on Feb. 6, 2024, but it never came to the House 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 Bola Tinuba — last night I reintroduced the resolution,” Smith stated during the hearing. “Help can’t come fast enough.”
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The legislation, retitled March 11 to House Resolution 220, underscores the need to designate Nigeria as a CPC.
“The Government of Nigeria has failed to make progress against religiously motivated persecution of Christians,” Smith stated in the press release, “despite religious freedom being enshrined as an essential human right in its Constitution.”
Smith testified alongside several religious freedom experts and Nigerian Catholic Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi. In his testimony, Smith noted the threat of militant Fulani herdsmen, who are members of a nomadic Muslim tribe. Quoting Bishop Agnabe, he stated that the herdsmen kill, steal, rape, and kidnap with impunity from the government.
He added that since 2009, Islamic extremists have killed 52,000 Christians and 34,000 moderate non-Fulani Muslims. They have forced another 5 million Nigerians, many of whom are Christian, into camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) within the country, and refugee camps at the country’s borders.
During Bishop Agnabe’s testimony, the prelate accused Muslims of strategically attempting to take over the country.
“A long-term, Islamic agenda to homogenize the population has been implemented, over several presidencies, through a strategy to reduce and eventually eliminate the Christian identity of half of the population,” the bishop said.
Besides the tactic of violence against Christians, Muslim leaders exclude Christians from positions of power, he noted.
“All of this takes place,” he said, “without government interference or reprisals.”
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