Berlin: The Nigerian government Tuesday said it does not tolerate religious persecution, responding to US President Donald Trump’s threats of military intervention over the killing of Christians by jihadists in the country.
Trump said over the weekend that he had asked the Pentagon to map out a possible plan of attack in Africa’s most populous nation because radical Islamists are “killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers”.
Roughly evenly split between a mostly Christian south and Muslim-majority north, Nigeria is home to myriad conflicts, which experts say kill both Christians and Muslims, often without distinction.
Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar insisted that his country’s constitution did not allow religious persecution.
“It’s impossible for there to be a religious persecution that can be supported in any way, shape or form by the government of Nigeria at any level,” Tuggar told a press conference in Berlin.
Nigeria has a “constitutional commitment to religious freedom and rule of law”, the foreign minister added.
Claims of Christian “persecution” in Nigeria have found traction online among the US and European right in recent months.
Flanked by his German counterpart Johann Wadephul, Tuggar warned against any attempts to divide Nigeria along religious lines, drawing parallels with civil war-ravaged Sudan.
“What we are trying to make the world understand is that we should not create another Sudan,” he said.
“We’ve seen what has happened with Sudan with agitations for the partitioning of Sudan based on religion, based on tribal sentiments, and you can see the crisis even when the partitioning was done according to religion or according to tribe,” Tuggar added.
– Muslim victims too –
Trump has not suggested any division of Nigeria along religious lines, but said without evidence that “thousands of Christians are being killed (and) Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter”.
Ikemesit Effiong, an analyst with the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence consultancy, suggested that Nigeria’s fears of partition are informed by history, with several former British colonies having experienced “violent partitions and secessions”.
“Nigeria is actually sensitive to the fact that while our diversity can be a strength, it can also be a lever of division, of violence and eventually of partition,” he told AFP.
Ethnic, religious and regional divisions have flared with deadly consequences in the past — notably during the country’s 1967-70 civil war — and still shape the country’s modern politics.
The West African political and economic bloc ECOWAS, based in Abuja, issued a statement Tuesday saying that militant groups in the region, including in Nigeria, “target innocent civilians of all religious denominations”.
The statement, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump’s recent comments, said claims that one particular group is targeted by violence “seek to deepen insecurity in communities and weaken social cohesion”.
Claims of a “Christian genocide” have been pushed in recent years by separatist groups in the southeast.
US-based firm Moran Global Strategies has been lobbying on behalf of separatists this year, advising congressional staff on what it said was Christian “persecution”, according to lobbying disclosures.
Central Nigeria sees violence between Fulani Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers, though experts say the conflicts are sparked by dwindling land and resources rather than religious differences.
Nigeria also faces “bandit” gangs in the northwest who stage kidnappings, village raids and killings.
The north’s population is mostly Muslim — meaning most of the victims are, too.
Nigeria’s newly appointed chief of defence staff, Lieutenant General Olufemi Oluyede, told reporters on Monday that “there are no Christians being persecuted in Nigeria”.
Analysts have suggested that Washington’s amped-up rhetoric could be related to Abuja’s rejection of demands to accept non-Nigerian deportees expelled from the United States as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
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