News
Pressure mounts on Biden to return Nigeria on US watchlist
Nigeria, again came under the radar for scrutiny in the US, with Chris Smith, a leading human rights champion in Congress, and several other top religious freedom experts, pressing the President Joe Biden’s administration to reverse course and add Nigeria, India, Vietnam, and Afghanistan to its blacklist of worst offenders when it comes to allowing citizens to practice their faith of choice.
Smith and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who chairs a government-created independent body that monitors religious freedom violations around the world, on Tuesday questioned the administration’s decision against placing those countries on the State Department’s list of “Countries of Particular Concern,” or CPCs, citing years of well-documented evidence of “particularly severe” violations.
The omission of those countries, especially Nigeria, from the official U.S. religious freedom blacklist has spurred controversy among many human rights groups, since Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed it from the blacklist in 2021, reversing a decision by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in December 2020 to designate the West African nation as a CPC.
Earlier this year, Smith introduced legislation that calls on the Biden administration to designate Nigeria as a CPC and appoint a special envoy to the country and the Lake Chad region to monitor and combat atrocities there.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, even though Christians make up nearly half of Nigeria’s population of 200 million. Islamist radicals, including terror groups such as Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province, and radicalized Faluni tribesmen, regularly attack entire Christian communities, torching churches and villages, and kidnapping and killing pastors and their congregations.
The violence against Christians has taken place for decades but has escalated in recent years in what Rabbi Cooper on Tuesday described as a “slow-motion genocide.” According to the religious freedom watchdog Open Doors International, more than 5,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria last year alone, accounting for nearly 90% of Christian deaths worldwide.
The Biden administration attributes the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria not to religious persecution but to a conflict over resources exacerbated by climate change.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, which Cooper chairs, and other leading human rights organizations ardently disagree.
“I think that many, many people in this country, including people in positions of responsibility, have difficulty coming to grips with the fact that religion and theology do play a strong role,” Cooper said at Tuesday’s hearing. “The Christians of Nigeria are understandably deeply worried about their future and are deeply concerned about their physical safety.”
Last December, USCIRF, which makes recommendations to the State Department, issued a rare sharply worded statement expressing “outrage” over the agency’s omission of Nigeria and India from the CPC blacklist, accusing Secretary of State Blinken of turning “a blind eye” to the countries’ serious religious freedom violations.
“There is no justification for the State Department’s failure to recognize Nigeria or India as egregious violators of religious freedom, as they clearly meet the standards for designation as CPCs,” the commission wrote.
Smith, who chairs the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on global health, global human rights, and international organizations, didn’t mince words, pressing Rashad Hussain, Biden’s ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom, for an explanation.
“Why was Nigeria taken off the lists just before Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Abuja?” Smith asked Hussain.
“I am concerned that the U.S. State Department is not using all the tools provided to hold guilty parties accountable,” he added.
Hussain appeared to agree with both Smith and Cooper on the countries in question but said his office is just beginning work on its annual report, which provides detailed information about every country’s religious freedom record. The office is expected to issue its findings in November.
“I share your concerns,” Hussain told Smith. “I don’t think we have much disagreement in terms of the substance of what’s happening on the ground.”
Hussain also noted that he and other people in his office have engaged directly with all of the top officials in India, Vietnam, and Nigeria, and that he met with former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, a military leader who was elected in 2015 on a platform of increasing security and curbing corruption.
Many Nigerians say these issues worsened under his watch. Earlier this year, Nigeria elected Bola Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State who fought as a pro-democracy activist in the 1990s, but the election is deeply disputed.
“I want to be clear that the CPC designation is one of the tools that we have, but there is a myriad of tools that we’re using to address the situation,” Hussain added. “And we will continue to do so because we continue to be concerned about the religious freedom conditions of all of these countries.”
Dr. Eric Patterson, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, said violent Islamist extremists have destabilized Nigeria and are accelerating its “downward spiral.”
“In Nigeria’s middle belt, sectarian violence has resulted in abductions, forced conversions, and thousands of deaths, the majority of which are ethnoreligious attacks targeting Christian communities and churches.”
USCIRF, a bipartisan body, has recommended the designation of India, a major U.S. ally, as a CPC for four years. Its most recent report said religious freedom conditions have continued to dip in India, and governments at all levels promoted and enforced discriminatory policies, including through “laws targeting religious conversion, interfaith relationships, the wearing of hijabs, and cow slaughter, which negatively impact Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and Adivasis.”
It also accused India’s government of efforts to suppress the voices of religious minorities through “surveillance, harassment, demolition of property” and detention under its “Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.”
Naming Afghanistan a CPC should be automatic after the Taliban took control of the country on August 15, 2021, and religious freedom conditions immediately deteriorated, Smith argued. The State Department had previously designated the Taliban an “entity of particular concern” for their use of terror to target religious minorities.
Last month, a USCIRF delegation traveled to Vietnam to assess its religious freedom conditions. In its previous annual report, the commission recommended the blacklisting of the Vietnamese government over its law on belief and religion, which requires organizations to register with the state and to harass unregistered religious groups. Religious minorities face “especially egregious” persecution, including physical assault, detention, or banishment for the peaceful practice of their beliefs, according to the commission.
Chidi Odinkalu, Nigeria’s fiery lawyer, law teacher and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), is emphatic that President Bola Tinubu is pushing to perpetuate himself in office, beginning with gaming the electoral process in 2027.
Odinkalu, Professor of Practice in International Human Rights Law at the Fletcher School, told his host Naija Unfiltered, a popular Nigerian podcast programme, that he was as sure as death that the President would not exit office in 2031, if he succeeded with his current gambit to remain in power beyond next year.
Hear him: “Yes. But as I said, let me repeat myself. There’ll be a third term. President Tinubu has not done all of this just for another four years. There will be a third term. And anybody who is doing, ‘it is not our portion,’ is not reading the evidence.”
To achieve this aim, the activist, who was also emphatic that the National Assembly, would play a role, added: “The current National Assembly is anything but national or an assembly. And if it’s an assembly, it’s not a parliamentary one. Many people have called it a rubber stamp, but I think that is actually abusive of rubber stamps. I think this National Assembly is a disgrace.
Citing how bizarre and completely compliant the national legislature had become to Tinubu, the ex-NHRC’s boss, stated: “If you can change your national anthem in less than 24 hours with no public hearing, no public consultation, no public involvement, it tells you you don’t have a country because a national anthem is fundamental to the construction of a national identity.”
Also referring to the current move by the President to introduce state police, Odinkalu, wondered how the Nigerian Senate would introduce the bill to that effect and proceed towards the first and second readings, as well as committee stage and passage in less than two hours, questioning how that was possible in normal clime.
Hear him: “Once we finish our elections, we’re going to amend our Constitution, introduce a single six-year presidential term. The current incumbent will be elected until 2031. In 2031, what will happen? The question will be, will he be entitled to run on the six-year term or will he not?
“You will then get the best Senior Advocates in Nigeria telling you the law is not retrospective. That is why the administration is supporting the litigation over President Jonathan’s tenure—not because the Constitution is not clear, but because they will say there is precedent. There will be a third term, and I’m prepared to bet on it.”
“If we continue to pay ransom, we are encouraging these criminals to kidnap more people. The cycle will only continue unless we stop rewarding criminality,” were the words of Dauda Lawal, Governor of Zamfara State, with which he blamed those in the habit of paying ransoms as the major factor fuelling the current wave of kidnapping incidents across the country.
Lawal, on Thursday at the ARISE News/THISDAY Town Hall Conference on State Police and National Security in Abuja, told his audience how he flatly refused to pay a ₦300 million ransom demanded by kidnappers who abducted his brothers in 2019.
Reiterating his opposition to negotiating with bandits and renewed his support for the establishment of state police, Lawal, while recounting the incident, said: “My own brothers were kidnapped in 2019, and the kidnappers demanded about ₦300 million. I told them I was not going to pay a dime. If they wanted to kill them, they could go ahead.”
Stating that his brothers were eventually released without any ransom being paid, he argued that paying ransom usually emboldened criminal groups by providing financial incentives for further kidnappings.
He added: “My position on ransom payments remains unchanged. I will not negotiate, and I will not pay ransom to any criminal, no matter what happens.”
Endorsing the move for the establishment of state police, to enable governors have greater operational authority over security within their states, he regretted that the current constitutional arrangement left governors with responsibility for security without corresponding powers to direct security agencies.
His words: “In as much as I am called the chief security officer of the state, I do not have the command-and-control authority to direct the operations of the security agencies. I’m prepared to support the funding of state police if the proposed policing structure is established. I’m confident that decentralised policing will improve intelligence gathering, response time and the overall fight against insecurity.”
Exactly seven years, two months and four days after he forced Walter Onnoghen, the 16th Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) out of office, Danladi Umar, former Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), on Thursday, found himself in Kuje prison.
Justice Peter Kekemeke, of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), sitting in Maitama, handed the ex-CCT boss the unwelcome package on Thursday, following his arraignment by the Federal Government on a four-count corruption charge.
Umar’s ordeal began after an investigations revealed that he abused his official position by conferring an undue advantage on himself while serving as head of the tribunal, having in 2021, reportedly using his wife’s bank account to collect the sum of N5.5 million from a contractor engaged to paint the headquarters of the CCT in Abuja.
He was also accuse of using the same account to collect another N6million on January 25, 2024, from a contractor who handled the digitisation of the CCT’s records and yet another N2.43 million a contractor paid as tuition fee of his daughter at Baze University, Abuja.
After pleading not guilty to offences, said to be punishable under section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000, Christopher Mshelia, lawyer to the FG, prosecuting the matter, applied for his remand in a correctional facility, while urging the court to set a date for the commencement of trial.
His pleas to be freed on bail pending the determination of the case, was opposed by the prosecution, which drew the court’s attention to the fact that it had just been served with the bail application, saying it needed time to respond to it, forcing Kekemeke to adjourn the case till July 15 for hearing while the former CCT boss remained behind bars.
Umar, had as CCT Chairman, on January 23, 2019, issued a controversial ex parte order that led to the removal of a serving Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen.
Following the ex parte order, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, on January 25, swore in the next most senior jurist of the Supreme Court, Justice Tanko Muhammad, to take over the leadership of the judiciary as Acting CJN.
Even though Onnoghen later voluntarily resigned his position as CJN on April 4, Umar went ahead and convicted him on April 18, 2019, on the federal government’s allegation that he had failed to properly declare his assets as required by law.
He gave the federal government the go-ahead to confiscate all monies in five accounts belonging to the former CJN, and also removed him as Chairman of both the NJC and the Federal Judiciary Service Commission (FJSC).
-
News3 weeks agoBREAKING: Troops rescue wife of kidnapped General! *Terrorists flee scene
-
News4 weeks agoBREAKING: Count me out, Okonkwo tells Atiku *Amaechi VP’s choice an insult to Ndigbo
-
News2 weeks agoBREAKING: Court sentences Nigerien, two others to death over terrorism
-
News4 weeks agoDickson: Obi, a big asset to NDC, we’re working together … but!
-
News4 weeks agoOvia, ex-Zenith Bank boss swings into luxury apartments *Flats hit $2.8million price tag
-
News7 days agoBREAKING: EX-SSG mowed down by gunmen! *He resisted being kidnapped – driver
-
News3 weeks agoAbductors of Oyo teachers panicking, freedom coming for victims soon!
-
News3 weeks agoTwo hours after Igboho’s ‘red-eyes’ to ‘Fulani’ leaders, gunmen free kidnap victims!