•FGN/US should do the needful for refugees

By EMMANUEL OGEBE, Esq

I received with delight the news that the U.S. President has announced the resignation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern for egregious religious persecution for only the second time in the over 25 year history of the International Religious Freedom Act (aka the Frank Wolf Bill.)

It is unclear whether the designation comes with a sanctions waiver that occurred last time in 2020 but I believe both nations should dialogue on a path forward.

Secondly, it is unfortunate that the Nigerian government chose to bury its head in the sand and engage in spin doctoring and performative outrage instead of addressing a truth known and suffered by millions of Nigerians despite repeated advice to act on the issues. As I said on my Arise TV interview last week, the designation at this point was a foregone conclusion. However it is not too late for Nigeria to reverse course.

Thirdly I urge the U.S. government to expand the number of refugees from the 7500 cap just instituted which is limited to white South Africans alone.

There are actual killings of farmers in Africa and an arguable genocide but it is in West Africa not South Africa. Last year thousands of farmers, mostly Christians, were slaughtered by jihadi Fulani herdsmen in what the U.S. and others literally call “farmer/herder clashes.”

And Trump knows about this. In his first term, he stated directly to Nigeria’s visiting president Muhammadu Buhari at the white house, “you need to stop the killing of Christians” – over seven years ago.

The killings have continued unabated including multiple massacres with victims as young as eight months old. Months ago, my team helped obtain a prosthetic arm for Alice whose husband, his parents and brother were slaughtered alongside her two kids in the Zikke Palm Sunday massacre of 54. Her last child was stabbed with a machete and Alice’s hand chopped off.

Trump’s policy action back then after he acknowledged Nigerian Christians’ killings in 2018 was banning Nigerians from the U.S. Now as he’s granting refugee status to white South Africans who have suffered nothing close to what Nigeria’s Christian farming communities are experiencing, it is important that Nigeria’s persecuted are co-opted too.

Since 1990, less than 2,000 white farmers have been killed in South Africa.

In the last two years, 2000 and 7000 farmers were killed in Plateau & Benue states in Nigeria. That’s on average 40 killed annually in SA to 40 in four days in Nigeria.

This month, 5,000 people were forcibly displaced from Kirawa in the predominantly Christian Gwoza District in Borno State following an attack by Boko Haram that destroyed their town. 3000 of them are now refugees in Cameroon. This is a continuous pattern in Gwoza which has been vastly deChristianized over the last dozen years with over 50,000 Gwoza Christians in refugee camps in Cameroon as at 10 years ago. Yet rather than resettle them abroad, they’re being returned to Nigeria where their community is still occupied by Boko Haram and people still being killed.

In fairness, Trump’s recognition of Christian persecution in Nigeria is actually legitimate and ironically an improvement on U.S. denialist policies of past Democrat administrations which claimed Muslim Fulani killer herdsmen jihadi militia that slash and burn thousands of communities chanting “Allah Ak bar” (God is Great in Arabic) is not terrorism or religious.

However he must match policy recognition with appropriate policy action.

Finally, I call on the Nigerian government to establish a high powered commission to investigate and engage with these concerns to work on Nigeria’s performance improvement plan towards Nigeria’s future delisting.

The shed blood of martyrs has been vindicated.

•Emmanuel Ogebe, Esq, is an award-winning international human rights lawyer based in Washington D. C. who has played a role shaping US Congressional and foreign policy on Nigeria. Mr. Ogebe has been a guest speaker at university campuses across the US and radio and TV programs around the world, including CNN, Fox, Al Jazeera, BBC, the Geneva Summit, United Nations, World Bank, the Canadian Parliament etc. His decades of advocacy led to the US designations of Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization (2013), Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (2020) and International Criminal Court Prosecutor’s determination of crimes against humanity in Nigeria (2020) to mention a few achievements. He was consulted by Presidents Clinton (2000) and Bush’s Administrations (2003) on their visits to Nigeria. He currently serves as Special Counsel for the “Justice for Jos” Project, advocating for and assisting survivors/victims of terror. Mr Ogebe is a recipient of several awards including President Obama (2009), the Darfur Women Action Group (2016), Diaspora groups in the US as well as US States and local authorities citations and recognitions in Florida, Arkansas and New Jersey amongst others. Emmanuel Ogebe this year received a Diaspora award from the Nigerian government as an outstanding citizen abroad for his humanitarian work and development of the law. The award was bestowed at Nigeria’s presidential villa where he was once a political prisoner of a military dictatorship on the 29th anniversary of his captivity. He came on exile to the U.S. a year after his imprisonment.