PRESIDENT Barack Obama of the United States (U.S.) has been asked to list Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern (CPC) because of the incessant religious crises, abuses and violence, especially in the northern part of the country.
A statutory independent panel, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), set up by the government to advise the country’s President on religious freedom worldwide, said Nigeria has a 10-year terrible record of religious crises since 1999.
In its yearly report to President Obama, which was released yesterday morning, the commission asked the State Department to declare Nigeria as a ” CPC ” on the matter of religion – a designation reserve for countries with worst cases of religious abuses in the world.
In fact, the commission said as Nigeria and the U.S. start their newly-signed Bi-national Commission, issues of religious freedom must be tabled to underscore the importance of the need for the Federal Government to address abuses, violations and the violence with impunity.
The U.S. International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998 requires that the government designate as CPC’s countries, whose leaders have engaged in or tolerated systematic and egregious violations of the universal right to freedom of religion or belief.
In the report, the commission said “having visited Nigeria three times over the past year, USCIRF has observed how unchecked waves of sectarian violence – for which no perpetrator has yet been brought to justice – have engulfed this key nation in a conflagration of impunity.
“Since 1999, as many as 12,000 Nigerians have been killed in a dozen incidents. One religious community is pitted against another in repeated acts of retributive violence. Victims and perpetrators have included both Muslims and Christians,” it stated.
The commission did not leave out the recent Jos, Plateau State clashes as it said “most recently, in early 2010, 500 persons in a Christian village near the northern city of Jos were killed in such sectarian clashes. In this incident, men, women, and children were hacked to death with machetes and then dumped into wells.”
The panel also posted a damning report on Nigeria’s criminal justice system as it declared that “not a single criminal, Muslim or Christian, has been convicted and sentenced in Nigeria’s 10 years of religious violence.”
The panel, which has forwarded the report to Obama and will meet him on the same, said it is the impunity that is the problem in Nigeria. It observed that “the Nigerian government and judicial system have so far been unwilling or unable to protect either side.”
Warning that more violence should be expected in Nigeria except there is a change, the panel noted that “already, we are seeing the creation of conditions for the proliferation of extremist ideology and terrorism.”
The panel said: “The government of Nigeria continues to respond inadequately and ineffectually to persistent religious freedom violations and violent sectarian and communal conflicts along religious lines.
“The toleration by Nigeria’s federal, state and local governments of systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom has created a climate of impunity, resulting in thousands of deaths.
“Several hundreds of people were killed in gruesome attacks in and around the city of Jos when ethnic and sectarian violence again erupted in that city. In July 2009, an Islamic sect wanting to impose a stricter version of Sharia law, Boko haram, fought Nigerian security forces and approximately 900 people were killed, including the sect’s leader and at least three Christian pastors.”
The commission listed other concerns as the “expansion of sharia (Islamic law) into the criminal codes of several northern Nigerian states and discrimination against minority communities of Christians and Muslims.”
It, therefore, urged “that the United States to press the Nigerian government to prevent and contain recurring sectarian violence by bringing perpetrators to justice, and ensure that these issues are an important part of discussions in the context of the newly-established U.S.-Nigeria Bi-National Commission.”
It was in May 2009 that the panel for the first time recommended that Nigeria be designated a “CPC”. The Guardian learnt that the State Department was yet to implement the recommendation in hopes that the Federal Government will address the issue.
In the 2010 report, the recommendation has been renewed, raising concern that Nigeria might fall into the U.S. official category, a decision that might carry other implications capable of worsening the relations between both countries at a time matters seem to be shaping up positively for them.
Justifying its determination that Nigeria be marked by U.S. as a CPC, the panel said the decision was based “on the fact that after years of Muslim-Christian clashes resulting in over 12,000 deaths and many more displaced, not a single perpetrator had been brought to justice.”
The report also said “USCIRF visited Nigeria again in March 2010 and found government officials, who previously did not meet with USCIRF, attentive and even grateful for its concerns and willing to work closely with the U.S. government in finding a solution to the breakdown in justice. Indeed, during this visit, the Ministry of Justice filed 41 prosecutions in the courts of Jos in response to the latest Christian-Muslim clashes.”
According to the report, the State Department is also redoubling its efforts to work with Christian and Muslim leaders in northern Nigeria, yet it was noted that “much more needs to be done, but it seems a process toward reform has at least started.”
In October 2009 and March 2010, a USCIRF delegation travelled to Nigeria to investigate sectarian violence and its impact on religious freedom. During these trips, commissioners engaged high-level federal and state officials on the government’s failure to prevent sectarian violence and discussed USCIRF’s previous recommendation that Nigeria be named a CPC.
The delegations met with several cabinet ministers, whose agencies have jurisdiction in these matters, as well as National Assembly leaders who exercise oversight over these agencies.
USCIRF added that it had seen the effects of impunity firsthand – particularly on vulnerable minority religious group – during fact-finding trips to Egypt, Nigeria and Sudan.
Besides Nigeria, the panel has asked the State Department to designate Iraq, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam as CPCs.
Eight others have been earlier recommended and listed as CPCs by the State Department. They are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan.
In a letter transmitting the report to Obama, the panel said “we would welcome the opportunity to discuss” these policy issues.