By Roger A. Agana
Published June 8, 2026

             The U.S. House passed legislation on Monday to extend its independent religious freedom commission through 2028, with Nigeria’s persecution crisis at the centre of floor debate.

             Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) authored HR 1744, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Reauthorization Act of 2026, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill sustains federal funding and authorisation for USCIRF, an independent, bipartisan legislative branch agency, through fiscal year 2028. A bipartisan companion bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) alongside Sens. Chris Coons, Jim Risch, Jeanne Shaheen, and Ted Cruz awaits action in that chamber.

             Congress created USCIRF under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, of which Smith was an original cosponsor. Since its founding, the commission has issued 27 annual reports and recommended 26 countries for designation as Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs), a formal U.S. government classification for nations engaged in severe violations of religious freedom. The State Department has acted on 18 of those recommendations.

             Nigeria dominated Monday’s floor debate as the most contested illustration of the gap between USCIRF’s recommendations and executive action. Smith noted that USCIRF recommended Nigeria for CPC status in 2009 and has done so every year since, but three successive administrations reached different conclusions. The first Trump administration designated Nigeria in 2020; the Biden administration removed it in 2021, with then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifying that the killings of Christian farmers in Nigeria had nothing to do with religion, a position USCIRF publicly described as “unexplainable.” The second Trump administration restored the CPC designation on October 31, 2025; Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited specifically the actions of Fulani ethnic militias.

             “USCIRF recommended CPC status, calling it like it is and pulling no punches,” Smith said.

             Rights groups have documented the scale of the crisis in Nigeria with alarming figures. ADF International reports that more than 9,500 people, mostly Christians, were killed in Benue and Plateau States between May 2023 and May 2025, with around 500,000 people displaced from their homes in targeted attacks. Open Doors, a Christian persecution monitoring charity, reports that more Christians are killed each year in Nigeria than in the rest of the world combined. These figures come from advocacy group monitoring and have not been independently verified by official government sources. The Nigerian government has contested characterisations of the violence as solely faith based, and analysts note that ethnic and resource competition also drive conflict in the affected regions.

             Smith described USCIRF as “a genuinely independent force” whose reporting shapes State Department work on religious freedom. He has chaired more than 30 congressional hearings on religious persecution since USCIRF’s founding and also authored the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act (PL 114-281), which expanded U.S. religious freedom tools across diplomacy, counterterrorism, and foreign assistance.

             The reauthorisation bill maintains the commission’s mandate to sponsor hearings, conduct investigative visits abroad, review religious freedom violations, and issue policy recommendations to the President, the State Department, and Congress.

This article was published on June 8, 2026 and can be found online at: https://www.newsghana.com.gh/uscirf-extended-through-2028-as-nigeria-crisis-shapes-debate/