Following the removal of Nigeria from the religious violator’s watchlist by America the Federal government has said that Nigeria should never have been on the list in the first place and that the Indigenous People of Biafra paid right-wing American lobbyists millions of dollars to spread falsehoods and misinformation about Nigeria.
According to President Muhammadu Buhari’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu in an article on Friday he said that the American lobbyists who took money from terrorists spread falsehoods against Nigeria’s democratically elected government and took advantage of well-meaning, God-fearing Americans to whom they spread their lies.
He went on to say that their aim was to drive a wedge, for political advantage, between the two great religions and by doing so, make true their fake claims that Muslims and Christians cannot live side-by-side in love and peace. They did not care if their maliciousness was the cause of religious tension. In fact, it is possible they sought to encourage it to prove their point. Yet, despite all the funds at their disposal, they only convinced for a brief time those who had been voted out of office by US citizens to add Nigeria to the list.
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Garba Shehu also boasted that ‘Nigeria is one of the most religious nations in the world – near equally balanced between Muslims and Christians. It is well-known the President counts amongst his personal friends many global Christian leaders, though he himself is Muslim; our Vice President is an Evangelical pastor; our cabinet is equally balanced between Christians and Muslims.’
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Washington on Wednesday removed Nigeria from its list of countries with religious freedom concerns.
Blinken made an annual announcement on Wednesday of the countries on the list, naming Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as countries of particular concern. He also placed Algeria, Comoros, Cuba and Nicaragua on a watch list for religious freedom, and designated armed groups, including Islamic State and several of its affiliates, as entities of concern.
But Nigeria, which was added to the list for the first time in 2020, was not redesignated.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in April recommended that Nigeria remain on the list, citing “violence by militant Islamists and other non-state armed actors, as well as discrimination, arbitrary detentions, and capital blasphemy sentences by state authorities” in the country.
The commission, which had also recommended that India, Syria, and Vietnam be designated as countries of concern, said in a statement that it was “appalled” by the removal of Nigeria.
“We urge the State Department to reconsider its designations based on facts presented in its own reporting,” Chair Nadine Maenza said, referring to the department’s report on international religious freedom in May, which cited religious freedom concerns in Nigeria.
