The US House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee approves sanctions on Nigeria over the widespread killing of Christians and religious violence.
Religious Freedom Commission calls out India, Nigeria and Vietnam for abuses
The United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, has given President Donald Trump the green light to impose stringent sanctions on Nigeria in response to the widespread killing of Christians in the country.
The decision followed a congressional hearing on Wednesday, during which lawmakers condemned the Nigerian government for failing to protect Christian communities from escalating violence.
The committee also cited a 2024 report by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, which revealed that Nigerians accounted for 90 per cent of all Christians killed worldwide each year.
The report documented that between October 2019 and September 2023, a staggering 55,910 people were killed, while 21,000 others were abducted by terrorist groups operating in the region.
During the hearing, Committee Chairman Chris Smith, who highlighted the severity of the crisis, pointed to testimony from Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi, Nigeria, as a viable witness.
He said: “One of our distinguished witnesses today—Bishop Wilfred Anagbe—travelled a long distance to be with us, and his testimony is both compelling and disturbing.
A Catholic-inspired think tank has accused the Nigerian government at various levels of complicity in the killing of Christians by jihadist forces, while some observers predict Africa’s most populous nation may be on the brink of a “religious war.”
At least 500 Christians have been killed in Plateau State since January according to Intersociety, a democracy and human rights advocacy group founded in 2008. Over the past 14 years, at least 52,250 Nigerian Christians have been brutally murdered at the hands of Islamist militants, according to the group.
The director of Intersociety, Emeka Umeagbalasi, has accused the government of encouraging the bloodshed.
“The level of violence is expected to continue and it has continued to rise because the authorities are fueling the crisis,” he said.
“The authorities are behind the killings. The authorities have injected the security forces with jihadist bad blood, to the extent that the security forces have left what they are supposed to do and they started going after people who are not lawless citizens,” Emeka told Crux.