Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said on Tuesday that he regarded President Donald Trump’s expression of concern for oppressed Christians as a “threat,” and that confronting violent extremists will make Nigeria “come out stronger.”
Tinubu said through his information minister, Mohammed Idris, that he is “looking for ways to ensure that the international community understands what Nigeria has been doing.”
“Only two weeks ago, Mr. President reinvigorated the hierarchy of the Armed Forces with the appointment of new service chiefs. These were steps already taken before the U.S. concerns, showing that he has been working assiduously to keep Nigeria safer for all,” Idris said.
Much of the information minister’s commentary about his meeting with Tinubu sounded more defensive than defiant, including his remark about reshuffling military leadership, and his insistence that the president has been “meeting with religious leaders and will continue to do so because they are important stakeholders in the Nigerian project.”
“For us to be characterized as a country that is intolerant of religion is absolutely false. What we have are extremists trying to divide the country. Nigerians must look deeper and reflect on our unity,” Idris said on Tinubu’s behalf.
“Mr. President is calm and taking the issue seriously. All relevant authorities are addressing it with the depth it requires, and we believe Nigeria will come out stronger,” he said.
President Trump warned on Sunday that he is considering direct military action against jihadi militias and terrorists in Nigeria because the government has not been doing enough to protect Christian farming villages from their attacks. The Trump administration has formally designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for religious oppression.
Many persecution watchdog groups have long accused the Nigerian military of ignoring jihadi attacks and responding ineffectively to threats like the Muslim herdsmen of the Fulani tribe, and Islamist terror groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State — West Africa Province (ISWAP). The Nigerian military’s boasts of success at fighting terrorists are difficult to square with the continuing strength and aggressive posture of Boko Haram and ISWAP.
The current posture of the Nigerian government is that seeming endless swarms of bandits, jihadis, and mysterious militias are preying on everyone in the hinterlands, killing Christians and Muslims in roughly equal numbers.
The Daily Trust of Nigeria on Wednesday quoted “experts across the country” who said impressions of Christian persecution or genocide have been created by “false information sourced from the social media platforms.”
One of those experts, analyst Dr. Kabiru Adamu of Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited, went on to admit that his organization “avoided profiling the fatality statistics according to religion because we felt that it would not help our national aspiration for peace.”
“Knowing how many Muslims or how many Christians were killed would, unfortunately, just add to the challenge and not directly help,” he contended.
Adamu said his figures showed that 9,000 people were killed in Nigeria between January and October, and he was confident that claims of 7,000 Christian deaths could not be true, although he lacked the data to prove it.
“Some would tell you the percentage of Christians in Nigeria is 40, some would say 55–45. So depending on who you talk to, if you go with the most conservative, which is 50-50, it clearly tells you that 7,000 figure is the figment of someone’s imagination. The reality is very different from that,” he argued.
The claim of 7,000 dead Christians comes from a Nigeria-based non-governmental organization (NGO) called the International Society for Civil Liberties and the rule of Law, also known as Intersociety.
It seems odd to be arguing about whether one analyst’s gut feeling about the religious affiliation of the dead is more valid than another, when the Nigerian government could make an effort to produce official figures. Christians and Muslims in Nigeria tend to live in different villages located in different regions — a fact Adamu alluded to when he argued the killings were not concentrated heavily enough in the Christian regions of Nigeria to support claims that Christians were the vast majority of the dead.
Also, critics of Nigeria’s stance toward Christian persecution note that the intentions behind violence are key to making determinations of genocide, and they believe the attacks against Christian areas are part of a deliberate strategy to drive the population away.
The Nigerian Senate stirred up some controversy on Tuesday when its president, Godswill Akpabio, allegedly claimed Nigerian Christians are not complaining about their situation, so President Trump should mind his own business.
Akpabio denied making the statement, which was attributed to him by a blogger, and said he had no authority to respond to allegations from the United States. He said he has asked the police to investigate the “false report” that put words in his mouth.
“Who am I to answer President Trump?” he asked during a session of the senate on Tuesday.
This did not sit well with the deputy senate president, Barau Jibrin, who took it upon himself to offer a tart response to Trump’s allegations.
“I said I’m not scared of Trump. I will say my mind. I’m a Nigerian. Nigeria is a sovereign nation. I’m a parliamentarian. I’m the deputy senate president, I can speak. I’m not scared of Trump. Don’t be scared of Trump. You say your mind about Trump. We are a sovereign nation,” Jibrin said.
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