•US Secretary of State Anthony John Blinken
Extraordinarily bloody Christmas massacres began with letters to Christians of impending attack and well-coordinated 48-hour carnage that killed hundreds, displacing thousands in 30 communities.
Yet, as US Secretary of State Anthony John Blinken visits Nigeria weeks after, he is culpably indifferent again, like his last visit, to the martyrs in the deadliest nation on earth for Christians.
Two weeks ago, Blinken’s legally-required annual religious persecution ranking glaringly omitted Nigeria again – the same day a pastor related to my staff was killed with a dozen congregants in church by a different Jihadist group.
But last week, Open Doors’ World Watchlist’s data showed Nigeria had 82% of all Christian deaths in 2023 (these fatalities did not include the Christmas massacres in Plateau state.) Its the 12th out of 13 years that more Christians died in Nigeria than the rest of the world combined.
But what could possibly cause the US to overlook the horrendous slaughter of women and children in their homes in a grotesque 7th October-like terrorist remake?
The simplistic answer would be – because Blinken was coming. In November 2021, days before his first visit to Nigeria, Blinken omitted Nigeria. It was so shocking, I hurriedly departed back to the US in disgust.
The Religious Freedom rankings usually emerge in December like in 2020 when Secretary Pompeo designated Nigeria a country of particular concern (CPC.) Blinken’s November release while already in Africa seemed especially convenient and self serving.
Then this year’s came in January just weeks before Blinken returned to the scene of the crime. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking Blinken is sacrificing Nigeria’s Christians on the altar of his Africa jamborees. Nero did that to the Christians too!
Sadly, however, Blinken is just the latest poster child of a callous Frankenstein that masquerades as US human rights policy – though worse. Much worse.
Secretary Clinton rebuffed multiple entreaties from the human rights community (including my 75-page legal brief) 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. Under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General, is authorized to designate an organisation as an FTO but this is generally a discretionary action and not a mandated one. Secretary Kerry finally did the FTO designation in the Obama second term after we worked with congress to introduce a bill to that effect.
As for Blinken, Sec. 102 of International Religious Freedom Act “Directs the Secretary of State to submit to the Congress… an Annual Report on International Religious Freedom describing: (1) the status of religious freedom in each foreign country, including trends toward improvement in the respect and protection of the right to religious freedom and trends toward deterioration of such right.” This is an obligatory annual requirement which Blinken has violated by rigging the report and ridding it of Nigeria contrary to IRFA (Frank Wolf’s Law) for three years straight.
Then there’s the false State Dept narrative that these massacres are 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 while actively denigrating religious freedom advocates for advocacy.
The dubious disappearance of Nigeria from the IRF review after 20years is not the only erasure of current history by the US government. The US Global Terrorism Index which previously ranked the Fulani Militia (responsible for the Christmas massacres) as the 4th deadliest terrorists in the world after Boko Haram and ISIS has since muted reports on Fulani terrorism.
This is apart from the failed attempt by 20 American academics led by former U.S. ambassador John Campbell to stop the US designation of Boko Haram as terrorists at the instigation of the state department 12 years ago!
Recently a U.S. diplomat who also served in Nigeria when I was there working for the US government 20 years ago, as Boko Haram launched its first Christmas attack, reminisced how, like me, we raised concerns with our respective agencies which were shoved aside. Look what has happened since.
It has not been a failure of intelligence but willful blindness that has cost America dearly.
In October 2022, the US embassy was on lockdown – not because an American female missionary had been abducted by Fulani kidnappers but because of a terrorist explosive devise implanted at a U.S. embassy compound.
Blinken ordered the first terror-related mass evacuation in history of hundreds of US embassy Abuja diplomats and families. Weeks later, he omitted Nigeria again from the religious persecution list even though American officials and private citizens had themselves become victims like Nigerians.
•Emmanuel Ogebe, Esq, is a prominent international human rights lawyer based in Washington D. C.
