International Organisation for Peace and Social Justice (PSJ UK) – Written evidence (ZAF0031)

PSJ UK Evidence

North-Eastern Nigeria is becoming increasingly uninhabitable for Christians, as well as other minorities, due to an upsurge in Islamist violence. According to Open Doors there are 93.8 million Christians in Nigeria, making up 46.7 per cent of the country’s population. Twelve of the northern states are under Sharia (Islamic) law, where life is most difficult for Christians (Open Doors, Nigeria).

• Since January 2019, an estimated over 1000 Christians have been slaughtered in North-Eastern Nigeria (Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, ‘Your Land or your Blood’, November 2019). This is in addition to over 6000 deaths since 2015 (HART).

• There were five major attacks against Nigerian Christians in Kaduna State between January and November 2019, resulting in an estimated 500 deaths. There were at least another five attacks in Bassa and Riyom Local Councils, as well as many attacks in Taraba State. Boko Haram remain in power around the Chad border region, including parts of Borno State (HART).

These statistics, collected by HART and document in their Nigeria Visit Report of November 2019, have been corroborated by independent journalists on the ground.

• In a Wall Street Journal piece from 20 December, French philosopher Bernard Henri Lévy, while visiting Nigeria to document the atrocities, describes the situation there as a “slow-motion war” against Christians. In Nigeria’s Kaduna State, he filmed the testimony of several victims, among them a young evangelist, Jumai Victor, 28, who survived having her left arm macheted off, joint by joint.

• Lévy notes, “Fulani extremists stormed into her village on long-saddle motorcycles, three to a bike, shouting ‘Allahu akbar!’ They torched houses and killed her four children before her eyes.” Lévy heard several reports that the Fulani are getting military training from Boko Haram, which itself is getting assistance from the Middle East.

Humanitarian and religious organisations have expressed further concerns about Nigeria:

• Nina Shea, Director of the Hudson Institute Center for Religous Freedom, writes “Between 2009 and 2017, Boko Haram bombed and attacked 900 churches, some of which, like St. Theresa’s Catholic Church one Christmas, were filled with worshippers” (NS, 11.01.20, NCR).

• She notes: The Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria has described the area as “killing fields” due to the frequency and scale of the anti-Christian violence. Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of the Archdiocese of Abuja told Vatican Radio that he sees the Christmas beheadings as part of a continued effort to establish an Islamic state. According to the archbishop, ISWAP hopes to “be able to destroy Christians, take over the country and even the neighboring countries.”

• Nigeria ranks twelfth on Open Doors World Watch List 2020 of the countries in which Christians are most persecuted. By comparison, Syria ranks eleventh and Saudi Arabia ranks thirteenth, with Iraq fifteenth and Egypt sixteenth. Nigeria is currently just one rank below ‘extreme’.

• The difficult situation for persecuted Christians and other minorities is compounded by the hostile media context. Reporters Without Borders ranks Nigeria 120 out of 180 countries for press freedom, noting a ‘climate of permanent violence’. It places just above Afghanistan.

• A resulting lack of transparency makes it harder to expose endemic corruption. The Corruption Perceptions Index 2019 ranked Nigeria at 146th in the world - two places lower than 2018 - scoring an abysmal 26 points out of a possible 100, level with Iran.

Arguments that the emerging crisis for Christians and other minority believers in North-Eastern Nigeria is due to climate change or economic considerations fail to account for the ideological and religious underpinnings of the violence:

• In the north, Boko Haram is the biggest scourge of Nigerian Christians. Founded in 2009, that group, whose name means “secular education is forbidden,” works to violently suppress all ideas and areas of knowledge outside of Islam. In its range of operations in rural northern Nigeria, the state governments already enforce sharia (Islamic) law, but Boko Haram aims to establish an Islamic state (NS, 11.01.20, NCR).

• Under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State, Boko Haram split into two factions. One is officially affiliated with ISIS and is referred to as the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). The other, known as the Shekau faction, swore fealty to ISIS but was rejected because it would not give up killing Muslims who stood in their way (NS).

• Regarding their treatment and view of Christians, there is no difference between the two factions. In one video rant, Shehau leader Abubakar Shekau declares: “This religion of Christianity you’re practicing is not the religion of God. It’s paganism. We are trying to coerce you to embrace Islam because that is what God instructed us to do” (NS).

• Both employ extremely bloody and cruel tactics to accomplish this forced conversion of the Christians who account for nearly half of Nigeria’s population. Boko Haram’s open boasts about its abduction of Christian girls for sexual enslavement and coerced conversion to Islam impressed ISIS, which, in 2014, admired Boko Haram’s practice in its early fatwas blessing the practice of sexual enslavement of Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria (NS).

• One example of this horrific practice has garnered some Western attention, thanks to the activism of her mother, Rebecca: Leah Sharibu was kidnapped from her school in Dapchi village by jihadists with 109 other schoolgirls in February 2018. As the only Christian captive, she has now spent over two years in captivity, and it is feared there are many more girls in her situation across Northern Nigeria (NS).

Nor is the emerging crisis particular only to Nigeria:

• The Fulani (a massive nomadic tribe, spanning parts of several countries, that have an Islamic-extremist component) terror has spread through Mali and over the past year began spilling over the border into Burkina Faso. Whereas previously, the 20% of the population that is Christian peacefully coexisted with the Muslim majority, in 2019, northern Burkina saw two Catholic priests, including a Spanish missionary, and two Protestant ministers shot, along with their faithful in attacks on Christian services by Fulani motorcycle gangs (NS).

The emerging threat may well engulf the Sahel in a short space of time if little is done to mitigate it. The UK has only recently committed 250 British soldiers to Mali, and 30 to Senegal, where they are training special forces from across West Africa in a US-led counter-terrorism exercise involving more than 1,600 troops.

The BBC reports (Defence correspondent Jonathan Beale, 2 March 2020):

Maj John House has been leading the British element of the training in Senegal with the focus on infantry skills and counter-terrorism operations. 

He said it was in Britain's interests to get more involved in the region. 

"If we don't act we may find the problems getting closer to our door," he said. "The more they have a presence in the region, the more we can feel the effect back in the UK.” 

Officers from US Special Operations Command Africa, which has been responsible for overseeing the exercise, are just as blunt.

US Maj Chris Giaquinto said the extremists "want to create a safe haven in Africa in order to grow and facilitate attacks, possibly in Europe or the United States".

There are now multiple extremist groups operating across the sub-Saharan region known as the Sahel. They include ones linked to the so-called Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

Commander Djibril Diawara, of the Senegalese Armed Forces, described the situation as "alarming".

Over the past year the extremists have spread south from Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

PSJ UK maintains that a strong Africa is a safe and peaceful Africa for all. Any long-term development programme for the Continent must factor in firstly the peace and security of all citizens.

Formulated as questions, PSJ UK proposes five core areas in which the Inquiry can inform and pressurise the Government’s policymaking with general regard to sub-Saharan Africa, and in particular Nigeria, with which the UK has maintained a special relationship:

1. In light of the Nigerian Government’s admission that Christians are being targeted in Northern Nigeria, will the British Government move a UN resolution to send in Peace Keeping forces to protect vulnerable communities and citizens in Nigeria?

2. Will the UK renew its offer to assist in the search and rescue of Leah Sharibu, an ISIS captive for two years now, and others abducted and enslaved in Nigeria?

3. Will the UK Government join forces with the Americans to send in physical and technological observers to the conflict zones, as the UK and France does in Mali?

4. Will the UK Government focus more or most of its International Development Aid to Nigeria to assist the victims and the vulnerable from Nigeria’s insecurity crisis? Will it use a large percentage of its aid budget to Nigeria for providing more direct assistance to internally displaced persons living in poor conditions and for enhancing security provision for vulnerable communities and people including the Christian communities in the North East and Middle Belt where they have been particularly targeted (even by the Nigerian Government’s own admission)?

5. Heading the PM’s call for increased post-Brexit trade and investments in Nigeria, what security advice and warnings are the FCO and DIT offering to British investors?

Received 27 March 2020