LAGOS: US Sen. Ted Cruz has been trying to rally fellow evangelical Christians and urge Congress to designate Nigeria as a violator of religious freedom with unfounded claims of \u201cChristian mass murder,\u201d which the government of the West African nation has vehemently rejected as false.
\nCruz, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wants Nigeria to be designated a country of particular concern as one with \u201csevere violations\u201d of religious freedom. Designated countries include Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. A designation could result in US sanctions. The bill he introduced last month is awaiting action by the Senate and there is no certainty of it being approved.
\nCruz\u2019 claims have been amplified by some celebrities and commentators in the US, without evidence, with some going as far as alleging a \u201cChristian genocide.\u201d Cruz\u2019 office did not respond to questions, including about his motivation for the allegations.
\nHere\u2019s what to know.
\nBoth Christians and Muslims are killed
\nNigeria\u2019s 220-million-strong population is split almost equally between Christians and Muslims. The country has long faced insecurity from various fronts including the Boko Haram extremist group, which seeks to establish its radical interpretation of Islamic law and has also targeted Muslims it deems not Muslim enough.
\nAttacks in Nigeria have varying motives. There are religiously motivated ones targeting both Christians and Muslims, clashes between farmers and herders over dwindling resources, communal rivalries, secessionist groups and ethnic clashes.
\nWhile Christians are among those targeted, analysts say the majority of victims of armed groups are Muslims in Nigeria\u2019s Muslim-majority north, where most attacks occur.
\nBoth Muslim and Christian communities, and groups, have at various times alleged \u201cgenocide\u201d during religiously motivated attacks against both sides. Such attacks are often in the north-central and northwestern regions struggling, among other forms of violence, with farmer-herder conflict that is between farming communities \u2014 predominantly Christians \u2014 and Fulani herders who are mainly Muslims.
\nJoseph Hayab, a former chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria in Kaduna state, among the worst hit by the insecurity, disputed claims of \u201cChristian genocide.\u201d
\nWhile thousands of Christians have been killed over the years, \u201cthings have been better than what they were before,\u201d Hayab said, warning, however, that every single death is condemnable.
\nNigeria\u2019s government rejected Cruz\u2019 claims, which have been discussed among Nigerians. \u201cThere is no systematic, intentional attempt either by the Nigerian government or by any serious group to target a particular religion,\u201d Information Minister Idris Muhammed told The Associated Press.
\nNigeria was placed on the country of particular concern list by the US for the first time in 2020 in what the State Department called \u201csystematic violations of religious freedom.\u201d The designation did not single out attacks on Christians. The designation was lifted in 2023 in what observers saw as a way to improve ties between the countries ahead of then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken\u2019s visit.
\nResponding to the latest claims from US commentators, the Christian Association of Nigeria said it has worked to draw attention over the years to \u201cthe persecution of Christians in Nigeria.\u201d
\nIn its 2024 report, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom highlighted attacks targeting both Christians and Muslims in what it called systematic religious freedom violations in Nigeria. \u201cViolence affects large numbers of Christians and Muslims in several states across Nigeria,\u201d the commission added.
\nWhat the data says
\nData collected by the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data program shows 20,409 deaths from 11,862 attacks against civilians in Nigeria between January 2020 and this September.
\nOf those, 385 attacks were \u201ctargeted events against Christians \u2026 where Christian identity of the victim was a reported factor,\u201d resulting in 317 deaths, ACLED says.
\nIn the same period, there were 417 deaths recorded among Muslims in 196 attacks.
\nWhile religion has been a factor in Nigeria\u2019s security crisis, its \u201clarge population and vast geographic differences make it impossible to speak of religious violence as motivating all (the) violence,\u201d said Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst at ACLED.
\nAnalysts reject claims of genocide
\nAnalysts say Nigeria\u2019s complex security dynamics do not meet the legal definition of a genocide. The UN convention on preventing genocide calls it acts \u201ccommitted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.\u201d
\n\u201cIf anything, what we are witnessing is mass killings, which are not targeted against a specific group,\u201d said Olajumoke Ayandele, an assistant professor at New York University\u2019s Center for Global Affairs who specializes in conflict studies. \u201cThe drumming-up of genocide might worsen the situation because everyone is going to be on alert.\u201d
\nChidi Odinkalu, a professor at Tufts University\u2019s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a former chairman of Nigeria\u2019s National Human Rights Commission, said Nigerian authorities, however, need to address the rampant violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LAGOS: US Sen. Ted Cruz has been trying to rally fellow evangelical Christians and urge Congress to designate Nigeria as a violator of religious freedom with unfounded claims of \u201cChristian mass murder,\u201d which the government of the West African nation has vehemently rejected as false. Cruz, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":88306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88309,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88292\/revisions\/88309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}