Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), author of the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, said the Biden Administration’s decision to remove Nigeria from the list of countries that violate religious freedom was “totally unjustified” and “a retreat from the noble and necessary fight to protect victims of religious persecution.”

            On November 15, the U.S. State Department released its annual “Countries of Particular Concern” and Nigeria was removed from the list.

            Genocide Watch has called Nigeria a “killing field of defenseless Christians.”

            Open Doors, a religious freedom watchdog, ranked Nigeria the world’s ninth most serious violator of religious freedom, stating that more Christians die for their faith in Nigeria than in any other country.

            The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) strongly criticized President Biden’s reversal and said it was “unexplainable that the U.S. Department of State did not redesignate Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) and treated it as a country with no severe religious freedom violations.  In December 2020, the U.S. Department of State designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC)… due to systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom. Violent attacks by Boko Haram and ethno-religious conflict have become more frequent...”

            Smith, the former Chairman and current Ranking Member of the Africa, Global Health and Global Human Rights Committee, has chaired multiple hearings on what is unfolding in Nigeria featuring policy experts offering diverse voices.

            “I couldn’t be more disappointed in Secretary Blinken,” said Smith, who also serves as Co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.  “You can’t give President Buhari a passing grade when he has utterly failed to protect religious freedom, including and especially that of Christians. A core principle of any robust democracy is respect for human rights, including religious freedom.”  

            At one of the hearings Smith chaired last year entitled “Conflict and Killings in Nigeria’s Middle Belt,” Bishop William A. Avenya of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gboko, Nigeria testified: “The mass slaughter of Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, by every standard, meets the criteria for a calculated genocide from the definition of the Genocide Convention as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’ as well as the available facts. This has inflicted deep mental, psychological, physical and economic injuries to the affected families and communities.”

            Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, Nigeria, testified at another hearing Smith chaired in July: “…Nigeria remains one of the most enigmatic pieces of God’s real estate on earth …home to one out of five black people on earth. Highly resourced, but endemically corrupt, a combination of serious governance missteps, series of military coups, years of maladministration, a culture of violence have seriously slowed down what should have been one of the greatest nations on earth.

            “…frustrated by the endless bloodletting, the Catholic Bishops in March, 2020 took to the streets to call the attention of the federal government to end the killings across the country …let me make a few appeals. First, to the international community. The persecution of Christians based solely on their faith and not on any crimes they have committed poses one of the greatest threats to our existence and common humanity,” Kukah said.

            According to the Daily Post, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria said that “The curious decision of the US government to take Nigeria off the list of countries violating religious freedom came to the Christian community in our country as a rude shock”.  They said, “selective killings of religious worshippers based on their faith” are ongoing under the regime of the Nigerian President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari…“It was wrong for the United States to adopt this provocative and ignorant decision even when Christians of Northern Nigerian extraction are killed by Muslim Fulani armed militia supported by officials working inside the office of President Muhammadu Buhari.”

            Smith said that “despite the fact that Fulani militants are systematically targeting and slaughtering Christian farmers in Nigeria’s Middle Belt as well as attacking non-Fulanis throughout the country with the apparent complicity or at least indifference of Nigerian authorities—a record that landed Nigeria on the CPC list last year—the State Department no longer identifies Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), nor even places Nigeria on its Special Watch List.”

            Smith said “that the withdrawal of the CPC designation coincided with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Nigeria—when he should have been confronting President Buhari on his record—is appalling.  The failure to hold Buhari to account—indeed to reward him by withdrawing the CPC designation—will only embolden Fulani militants.  The Nigerian government has also failed to protect Nigerians from other extremists such as Boko Haram, Ansaru and Islamic State West Africa.”  

            A longtime leader in promoting international religious freedom, Smith has led three human rights trips to Nigeria over the years to advocate for those persecuted for their faith.

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