TruthNigeria Reporting Cited by Subject Expert
By Douglas Burton
(Washington, D.C.) As kidnappings of Christians in Nigeria proceed apace, on Wednesday a Congressional Subcommittee on Africa reached consensus to name and shame the government in Abuja to get its attention. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa Chairman Chris Smith (Rep., N.J.) opened the hearing titled “Conflict and Persecution in Nigeria: the Case for a CPC Designation.”
It was Smith’s 8th hearing on the dreary topic since 2010, yet since that first outing, “the situation has only gotten worse,” he told the packed hall.
Four subject experts testified before the subcommittee, and unanimously recommended that Nigeria be redesignated “A Country of Particular Concern,” which diplomats consider a reputational sanction in itself. Yet, the CPC label can prevent Nigeria to qualify for some arms purchases and can complicate borrowing from the World Bank.
The panelists included Nina Shea, Director of Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, Tony Perkins, former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of Makurdi Diocese, and Ms. Oge Onubogu, Director of the Africa Program at the Wilson Center.
Smith told the committee that the designation of CPS assigned to Nigeria in the last year of President Donald Trump’s first Administration, then removed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken without explanation in 2021, was more than earned by the actions of the government.
“The CPC’s annual designation is based on whether a nation denies religious freedom to its citizens or tolerates that denial,” he said with emphasis,
“A robust effort will be coming soon” to hold Nigerian bad actors accountable, Smith said, including application of the Magnitsky Act sanctions to deny travel visas to failing officials.
Bishop Wilfred Anagbe told the committee that his diocese has 9 IDP camps, and that in most, families have only small tarpaulins for shelter. “These people have no place to go back to except their own family plots,” yet they are among up to 2 million refugees in their own state because their ancestral lands are occupied by Fulani Ethnic Militia. He explained that the only humane and practical solution is for the Federal government to remove the invading ethnic groups and to enable their safe return to their own plots.
Wilson scholar Ms. Oge Onubogu told the committee that the root of all the violence in Nigeria could be traced to bad governance and argued against casting sectarian belief as a driver of the conflict.
Tony Perkins, a former head of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom countered: “This is a complex issue but to deny that religion is a factor is wrong.”
Shea cited Truth Nigeria reportage to document the appalling state of Nigerian governance that has been linked to massive torture, death and violation of Nigerian Christians basic human rights.
“On February 26, TruthNigeria reported, over 200 Christians are being held hostage, starved and tortured in a camp, near an army base, in a wooded area off the busy Kaduna-Abuja expressway,” Shea told the committee. “It came to light, when, three months after being abducted from their homes, eight hostages, in dire condition, were released after a ransom payment of $27,000. They were chained, whipped and starved and referred to as “infidels” by captives who spoke the Fulani’s Fulfulde language. They witnessed others dying from starvation or shot dead when ransoms didn’t come,” she said.
Shea’s was referring to a continuing story in TruthNigeria that documents in video testimony the experience of eight Christian survivors of a torture camp that may be one of many in Kaduna State. Yet, to the astonishment of many, Nigerian military spokesmen refuse to confirm or to deny that 200 citizens are chained in a large forest containing as many as three terrorist compounds hold hostages.
In Kajuru County alone over the last 14 months there have been 768 kidnappings for ransom, according to the chairman of the Kajuru County Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp. A community leader in Kauru County told TruthNigeria more than 220 local people have disappeared since November of 2024.
As TruthNigeria expands its interviews of kidnapping victim in the remote rural areas of Southern Kaduna, it becomes obvious that hundreds and possibly thousands of abducted persons are outside the radar of law enforcement authorities and media alike. This is because Nigerian media are based in large cities where military officials or police hold press conferences. If the spokesmen do not hold conferences or issue press releases, the kidnappings may go completely unnoticed except by relatives who suffer devastating personal loss to pay the exorbitant ransom demands.
Dede Laugesen, executive director of Save the Persecuted Christians and an observer at the hearing Wednesday, believes that Nigerian citizens are reaching a boiling point of frustration.
“I believe that the persecution crisis in Nigeria’s Christian Middle Belt is reaching a tipping point from which there is no return,” Laugesen told TruthNigeria.
She went on to say, “The Middle Belt is a tinderbox ready to explode. Nigerian officials must immediately commit to ending the rampant religious-based violence and targeted land-grabbing attacks on Middle Belt Christian communities or this great nation with so much promise and, indeed, all of Africa and even Europe and America will endure the extreme consequence of their grave neglect.”
Douglas Burton is a former State Department officer and serves as the Managing Editor of TruthNigeria.
