who secured US FTO designations sheds light

As US Secretary of State Anton Blinken visited Nigeria last year, I opined that he brought no real hope to Nigeria due to his unwillingness to address the burgeoning terror-induced humanitarian crises.

In Plateau state, where the oldest American school in Africa is situated and more Americans born than any northern state, Fulani militias struck again – weeks after Christmas massacres that claimed over 230 lives making the one month total over 1,000 deaths according to Amnesty International. Whole families were burnt alive in home invasions that the Biden State Department falsely argued was “competition for resources” and “not religious.”

To understand just how bizarre the US narrative prior was, we must look at the Barkin Ladi/Xland massacre of June 2018 in which over 200 Christians were slaughtered - also in Plateau state.

The US found a hero amidst this genocidal atrocity - a Muslim cleric who courageously hid 300 Christians in his mosque and persuaded the Fulani Herdsmen terrorists not to kill them.

The imam received multiple awards for his actions including even a pilgrimage to his village by the immediate past US Ambassador to Nigeria Mary Beth Leonard and an invitation to Washington. However this was still “not a religious conflict”even though a heroic mullah saved Christians from Islamists in his mosque!

The million dollar question is – why didn’t the US redesignate Nigeria under Biden as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for egregious religious persecution as required by Frank Wolf’s Law (IRFA)?

Here was the situation. Russia invaded Ukraine. It is about land (not religion as both are Orthodox Christian). US called it genocide, sided with Ukraine and supported their resistance of the invasion. Hamas attacked Israel. It’s about land (and arguably a smidgen of religion). US called it terrorism, sided with Israel and supported their Gaza retaliation and invasion. Yet, USA said then that the Herdsmen atrocities were only about land and a multinational militia that slashes and burns hundreds of communities chanting “Allah Ak bar” (God is Great) was not terrorism, religious or genocide!

The real lesson was that there was no rhyme or reason to USA’s analysis, narrative or policy on Nigeria. Here’s how.

The Fulani are historically Jihadi nomads who invaded the tribes in modern day Nigeria two centuries ago. They have retained their medieval practices save for upgrading from warhorses to motorbikes and bows and arrows to AK-47 automatic rifles.

Just like Russia feels Ukraine belongs to them from the Soviet era so they invaded in complicity with some pro-Russian Ukrainians, West Africa’s Fulanis think Nigeria belongs to them from their 1804 jihad era and have been invading for years in complicity with some Fulanis settled or nestled in indigenous and mostly Christian Nigerian communities. Russia has more of an argument and affinity to Ukraine than these foreign Fulani militia have to Nigeria – Ukraine having been a component of the USSR and Nigeria never having been a component of the diffuse Fulani sphere.

Similarly, just as the western world arranged for an Israeli state to be established in Palestine, Colonial UK amalgamated it’s poor northern (mostly Muslim) territory with a prosperous southern (mostly Christian) territory – turning a two-state dichotomy into a one-state travesty – purely for imperial economic expedience.

And just like Gaza has been infiltrated with global jihadist, state and non-state, elements launching attacks on their more developed and democratic neighbor, destabilizing the region, Nigeria’s progressive south and non-Muslim north central communities have been attacked by regional jihadi elements (Fulani terrorists) who have infiltrated the country – like their global jihadi counterparts (Boko Haram/ISWAP) destabilizing the West African subregion. No country in sub Saharan Africa has more jihadi terror infiltration than Nigeria with half a dozen globally known groups overtly active and over a dozen more in stealth mode.

Which brings us to the absurdity where the Biden administration condemned islamist terrorism against Israel; Israel condemned Islamist terrorism against Nigerian Christians (at Christmas no less) but the US euphemised Islamist terrorism against Nigerian Christians as just “climate change!”

The travesty would be ludicrous if it were not so tragic as another Democratic administration replayed the same painful policy prance playbook from before. Secretary Clinton in the Obama/Biden first term designated the leaders of Boko Haram as terrorists but refused to designate the group itself as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) despite the fact that it nearly killed American UN diplomat and FBI Legal Attaché Vernice Guthrie and Jennifer Dent in deadly 2011 suicide bombings – covered up till this day.

Obama only designated Boko Haram in the second term under Secretary Kerry when I successfully led an advocacy campaign to do it via US congressional action after we drafted a bill sponsored by renowned Congressman Chris Smith to designate Boko Haram as an FTO at a congressional hearing for that purpose (the Boko Haram Terrorist Designation Act of 2013 H. R. 3209.)

It would be recalled that prior to that, the Obama administration’s narrative was that socio-political and economic marginalization of the north by the south was the reason for the violence in Nigeria – an argument that was deeply flawed and did not reflect Nigerian reality. This indirectly blamed President Jonathan a Christian Southerner, who only became president in 2010, for the 2011 post-election violence against his supporters that killed over 1000 people and destroyed 700 churches in the 12 northern Islamic sharia states.

Thus the Biden administration yet again engaging in cognitive dissonance by rolling back and not even examining Nigeria for tolerating egregious religious persecution under the International Religious Freedom Act - similarly provoked the ire of Nigeria observers and advocates in the U.S.

This was happening once more, years after Obama’s failed first term Nigeria policy which claimed the violence was not religious, the terrorists were not terrorists, the victims were guilty of making the aggressors (north) poor and the aggressors should be rewarded with more resources from more peaceful regions (south) https://justiceforjos.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/nigerias-persecuted-christians-deserve-better-than-current-us-foreign-policy/

Why? Partly because the US didn’t want to aid Nigeria in fighting Islamist terrorists for the optics since Jonathan was a Christian and their Mideast wars were in Muslim countries. Rather, the US tacitly supported Gen. Mohammed Buhari, an Islamist against Dr Jonathan Goodluck in 2015’s presidential elections.

Within weeks of coming to power, Gen. Buhari was feted in Washington and made a startling indictment of his hosts saying that the US government had “aided and abetted” Boko Haram by refusing arms sales to his defeated predecessor Dr Jonathan Goodluck – a sentiment repeated by the ex-president in his autobiography.

Essentially, a brutal autocrat subsequently blamed for enabling his barbaric Fulani kins’ atrocities, agreed with his mild-mannered opponent, blamed for weakness, and me – a critical human rights lawyer whom they both fought - about America’s failed Nigeria policy under Obama which was still better even than Biden’s.

Here’s how. The extraordinarily bloody Plateau Christmas 2023 massacres began with letters to Christians of impending attack and well-coordinated 48-hr carnage that killed hundreds, displacing thousands in 30 communities.

Yet, as US Secretary of State Blinken visited Nigeria weeks after, the legally-required annual religious persecution ranking glaringly omitted Nigeria again even though Open Doors’ World Watchlist’s data showed Nigeria had 82% of all Christian deaths in 2023 globally (these fatalities did not include the Christmas massacres in Plateau state). It was the 12th out of 13 years that more Christians died in Nigeria than the rest of the world combined.

Sadly, however, Blinken’s response was worse. Much worse.

Secretary Clinton rebuffed multiple entreaties from the human rights community (including my 75-page legal brief) and even US agencies to designate top global terror group Boko Haram a “Foreign Terrorist Organization”. Under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General, is authorized to designate an organization as an FTO but this is generally a discretionary action and not a mandated one. Secretary Kerry finally did the FTO designation in the Obama second term after we worked with congress to introduce a bill to that effect HR3209 as earlier mentioned.

As for Blinken, Sec. 102 of International Religious Freedom Act “Directs the Secretary of State to submit to the Congress… an Annual Report on International Religious Freedom describing: (1) the status of religious freedom in each foreign country, including trends toward improvement in the respect and protection of the right to religious freedom and trends toward deterioration of such right.” This is an obligatory annual requirement which Blinken violated by rigging the report and ridding it of Nigeria contrary to IRFA (Frank Wolf’s Law) for three years straight.

•Emmanuel Ogebe Esq is an award-winning international human rights lawyer based in Washington, DC, USA.