FOR THE RECORD: Names of US Senators helping fuel ethno-religious division, unrest in Nigeria revealed
*US Congressmen tag Nigeria as nation at war with Christians based on CAN, IPOB, Afenifere’s misrepresenting reports of security situation – Investigations
*They blame UN Secretary of State for not believing Nigeria is anti-Christian state
*Want country re-blacklisted as Country of Particular Concerns
*The spurious allegation by US Senators and the counter position
By KEMI KASUMU
“Sadly, the Map of Nigeria continues to prove these plotters a failure, as Southern Nigeria, all the geopolitical zones put together, do not match up to one-third of the North they persistently wage war of negative propaganda and international conspiracy against using ethnic and religious violence as blackmail. Many have even said this should be the time for Nigeria to decide which of Russia-China alliance or West it should stick to, should there be any mark of such blacklisting from USA this time around.”
Members of the muchmouthed international conspiracy responsible for fueling of ethnic and religious disunity and crisis in Nigeria have been revealed. They have been at work especially since many of their ‘prophetic’ and foreign media predictions failed to see Nigeria breakup at 100 years of amalgamation and then extended their activities to climax at the emergence of Muslim Northerner, when President Muhammadu Buhari came to power on May 29, 2015.
They have since then remained at work untiring, although no names have ever been mentioned, until they wittingly or unwittingly revealed themselves recently. This is happening at a time the United States of America finds itself amidst the storm of global reconstruction with the New World Order launched, ostensibly, by Russia and China in February at a date preceding the start of Ukrainian war of Thursday 24 February, 2022 and was few days ago declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin as irreversible.
That is also as awareness is growing about the fact that the Western World is seriously envying Nigeria for its God-given natural resources namely oil in the South South, North East and North Central, Gold in the North West, Bittlemen in South West and other such natural endowment in virtually all parts of the country and that, for this singular reason, they are doing all things possible to destabilise the country, cut it into pieces to enable them feed fat on those resources as it is now clear that not even America can survive alone without relying on resources from other continent. It is, however, sad, investigations revealed, that some religious groups, personalities and ethnic groups and individuals in Nigeria have offered themselves to these Western countries as tools to achieve their goals against the country, failing always though.
The conspirators this time have been revealed as members of the United States Senate and the revelation was via a leaked official letter addressed to the US Secretary of State, Honorable Antony Blinken, on US Senate’s letterhead dated June 29, 2022 trying hard to convince the State Department headed by him to re-enlist Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), like it was done under former President Donald Trump based on information received from Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), including precisely CAN President Samson Ayokunle and Bishop of Sokoto Diocese of Catholic Mission, Rev Fr Bishop Kukah, and some other Christian leaders in a generally known and already talked plot, agreed to by some ethnic groups – fronted for by terrorist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and other ethnic individuals as seen in a recent “dangerous” letter signed to the United Nations, United States among other members of the international community, by Gani Adams.
All of these were said to have continued by these religious and ethnic groups working in cahoots with some local and foreign media as well as acclaimed human rights lawyers and activists based on dictates of their foreign fund providers and agents in implementing the West’s Agenda as vehicle to achieving their set goal of recapturing the their own one and only country militarily, politically and economically, thus suggesting why Nigeria is still crawling like a baby over 62 years after Independence and 59 years after it became a Republic and sovereign nation.
Signed by five US Senators, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Mike Brain, James M. Inhofe, and Tom Cotton, and copied to The Honourable Rashad Hussain, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, United States Department of State, 2201 C St NW, Washington, D.C. 20520, the international collaborators, by the letter, carved their demand in a manner ostensibly orchestrated to lure the US Secretary of State to re-enlist Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).
It will be recalled that it is global knowledge that CAN, assisted by one National Christian Elders’ Forum (NCEF) and some ethnic groups namely Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Middle-Belt Forum and working with some opposition politicians, had been issuing inciting press releases, writing letters to international community in clear misrepresentation of the true security situation on ground in Nigeria, as they said it was about Islamisation, Northernisation and Fulanisation Agenda being implemented by the Federal Government of Nigeria led by Muhammadu Buhari, because the President is a Muslim by religion, Northerner by region and Fulani by tribe. A blackmail of a sort.
As criticised Islamophob, these local elements are known to be taking that “provocative” position and misrepresentation because President Buhari is a Muslim and Northerner, particularly, of Fulani tribe. They said the President had been using the constitutional armed forces of Nigeria to back his tribesmen they tagged ‘Fulani herdsmen’ to kill Christians in the country, according to their unverifiable claim, in order to achieve Islamic State status for the indisputably multi-religious state they (mainly Christian groups and individuals) wanted to be known as Secular State and, claimed further that he backed his Fulani people to declare war on people of Southern Nigeria during which their land was to be taken and handed to the President’s tribesmen. Their listening US Senators did not confront them with probing questions challenging those provocative reports and letters they were writing, “What does Northern Nigeria, where just one state, demographically and geographically, is bigger than a whole geopolitical zone of Southern Nigeria or two states bigger than the whole of the Southern region put together?” They did not ask their so called reporters such questions neither did they come down to ask appropriate persons and groups (religious and ethnic even professional across the regions) to know the truth. They just rose to writing such a damaging letters because the reports they received served their own purpose.
It will be recalled also how, in a press statement during the Coronavirus pandemic that was a global disaster, the Samson Ayokunle-led Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) described the globally imposed lockdown – done as a preventive measure against the dangerous disease killing Americans in their thousands daily – as persecution of the Church, blocking of Churchgoing and killing of Christians by Muslim-North-led Nigerian authorities. CAN particularly said those things and US President at the time believed such information that are shamefully unverifiable from the Christian apex body in a country, where Muslim mosques including the National Mosque Abuja were locked, Muslims found with mosque premises arrested by officers not Muslims but doing their state work and Islamic faithful on that year (2020) Sallah day performed Eid of the Eid-ul-Fitr in their respective rooms or compounds.
It was on the ground of those unverifiable information that President Donald Trump, despite knowing the truth from President Buhari when he threw the question to him (“Why are you killing Christians in Nigeria?), still went ahead and listed Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), that is, where religious persecution and killing of Christians was tolerated. A development that had been described as very provocative but the over 100 million-member Muslim Ummah of the country refused to be provoked. Rather, the Ummah, led by Sultan of Sokoto His Eminence Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, a retired Army General and Co-President, World Religions for Peace headquartered in New York, United States of America, continued to engage national discourse with peaceful explanation of the true situation on ground until Donald Trump, who had accused China as plotting his removal from office in the October 2020 US presidential election and replacement with Joe Biden, was voted out and Biden came.
Upon assuming duty, the then new US President Joe Biden, knowing the lies in tbe information relied upon by Trump administration, removed Nigeria from status of Country of Particular Concern (CPC) and case closed. The latest clamour, through which the yet rested conspirators are reenacting their known baseless blacklisting of Nigeria, started as 2023 elections season was flagged off by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the same Christian Association-led coalition wanting Christian President and Southern ethnic groups wanting power shift to the South. In a bid to force the power shift they, investigations proved, embarked on series of negative propaganda and they did these in collaboration with some international conspirators who were not revealed until this weekend when the US Senate letter dated Sunday, precisely June 29, 2022 was exposed and names of the US Congress that have been collaborating in fueling all of these ethnic and religious killings that have been tagged on peaceful Fulani people of Nigeria were revealed.
In obvious show of how those senators were part of the conviction that made Trump believed the CAN, IPOB, Afenifere and other such people’s misrepresentations of the past leading to the enlisting of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) where religious persecutions were tolerated by government, the senators try hard to fault decision by the Joe Biden-appointed US Secretary of State, Honorable Antony Blinken, to remove Nigeria from that mischievous status that had been condemned by many other bodies within Nigeria and globally mainly outside United States of America.
In doing this, the US congressmen used the mob attack leading to the death of Deborah Yakubu Samuel in Sokoto, after she blasphemed the name of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the terrorist attack on St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State to justify their fresh call for the US State Department to re-enlist Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). The senators’ letter, we gathered, had been further enriched by a recent letter Gani Adams, a Muslim name bearing Yoruba occultist that had used the Owo Church attack to tell the United Nations and the United States that the Government of Nigeria headed by Muslim-Fulani’s supported tribes men had arrived the South West now killing Christians.
The spurious allegation by US Congressmen
According to the senators, “As you are well aware, horrific acts of deadly violence have been committed against Nigerian Christians in recent weeks, including the massacre of churchgoers on Pentecost Sunday and the stoning of a Christian college student. Sadly, such violence has become all too familiar for Christians in Africa’s most populous country.
“Last year, however, you inexplicably removed Nigeria’s designation as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) despite no demonstrable improvement in the country’s religious freedom conditions. On the contrary, the situation in Nigeria has grown worse. We previously urged you to immediately reverse your misguided decision, and we write today to renew our call.
“Recent high-profile acts of violence underscore the intense religious persecution that is regularly experienced by Nigerian Christians. On Pentecost Sunday, gunmen attacked St. Francis Catholic Church in Nigeria’s Ondo state, reportedly killing at least 50 churchgoers. Last month, a violent mob brutally stoned to death Deborah Emmanuel Yakubu, a student at Shehu Shagari College of Education in northwest Nigeria.
“According to reports, some Islamist students were enraged by a “blasphemous” message Deborah had posted in a WhatsApp group, in which she said that “Jesus
Christ is the greatest. He helped me pass my exams.” Merely expressing one’s Christian faith has apparently become tantamount to a death sentence in many parts of Nigeria. Religious violence and intolerance directed toward Nigerian Christians has worsened in recent years. One report documented more than 4,650 cases of Nigerian Christians who were killed for their faith in 2021. Accordingly, Nigeria earns the dubious honor—for the second consecutive year—of being the deadliest country on earth for Christians.
“We wrote last year that “[n]ot only has the government of Nigeria failed to take meaningful steps to mitigate such violence, but Nigerian authorities restrict and crack down on religious minorities and detain individuals indefinitely on blasphemy-related charges.” We remain concerned that the Nigerian government is failing to protect the religious freedom and basic safety of its Christian citizens.
“Furthermore, as this year’s annual reports from the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and from your own Department make clear, Nigerian government authorities directly participate in the persecution of Christians, Muslims, and even non-theists, most notoriously through arrests and convictions under blasphemy laws. Make no mistake: continued enforcement of state-sanctioned blasphemy laws enables the type of deadly violence that killed Deborah Emmanuel Yakubu and so many others.
“When we previously wrote you, we were met with a response which failed to answer our questions about why the State Department views Nigeria as not having engaged in or tolerated “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom” or even “severe violations of religious freedom.” This is unacceptable, especially because you are required by federal law to consider the recommendation of USCIRF—which, since 2009, has been to designate Nigeria as a CPC. In fact, USCIRF reiterated in its 2022 Annual Report that it was “appalled” at the removal of Nigeria’s CPC designation.
“Despite public statements from you and other State Department officials condemning the recent bloodshed in Nigeria, the fact remains that the Department still does not officially regard Nigeria as a severe violator of religious freedom. The State Department released its 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom on June 2, which starts the 90-day timeline for the Department to make its religious freedom designations.
“Given the abysmal state of religious freedom in Nigeria, it is incumbent upon you to reverse last year’s decision and redesignate the country as a CPC. The moment demands that you do so without delay.
“We look forward to your swift action on this important matter,” the US Senators said in the letter that has been described as a document with park of spurious allegations.
The counter position
On several occasions, Nigeria’s government had always advised members of the international community to tread softly on the Nigeria terrain when it comes to information gathering as the only time they can get credible and true position on the country’s security situation among others is when they are open-minded and holistic in their investigations, talking not just to a section of the populace in terms of religion, ethnicity but holding wider consultations and talking to the right people.
Imagine that these United States Senators gathered those sectional reporters and wrote their letter to US State Department without even asking the Sultan of Sokoto, who is the leader of the Muslim Ummah of Nigeria and who is well known to the Western societies as a doing well peace and unity builder, by way of trying to verify the information Christian Association of Nigeria that supposed to be working with the Sultan on the leadership of Nigerian Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) on peaceful co-existence among people various ethnic and religious backgrounds in the country. They failed to do this yet they had a belief that they pushed through to blacklisting Nigeria as a country that is anti-Christian, officially, and the same CAN President continues to have access to meeting the Muslim/Northern/Fulani President of Nigeria while it has not always been so with Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA). How further more should a Muslim in power show that he does not want to be misrepresented?
The position of United States and other Western nations including United Kingdom and Canada in the allegation of Western plots to collapse Nigeria through fueling of destabilization programmes using particularly religious organizations that have been zeroed down to the Christian Association and some of his cohorts and some so called activists, as shown in the effort of Omoyele Sowore to overthrown a newly re-elected Government of President Muhammadu Buhari in August 2019, has continued to resonate in all of the “unfortunate” issuance of saddening letters, press statements and reports by, mainly, members of congresses of those countries.
During the EndSARS, the role of Twitter making itself as mobilization centre for funding and operationality of the hugely calamitous protests was publicly seen as US, UK and Canada publicly spoke against its ban only to rescind their positions when they saw that the government in Nigeria was no longer like the former one, especially the one Buhari succeeded. Then came the Capitol uprising and the same Twitter began to take side with America against the protesters, in pure double standard to what it did with EndSARS taking side with protesters despite seeing that they were outrightly out for treasonable felony. In the case of US Capitol, protesters were shot at, killed and arrested. Twitter lauded the US security for doing so. But Nigeria, where up till the moment no single evidence of massacre has been produced, Twitter drove the reports of genocide against Nigerian Government and Army to incite the country people against their only means of defence against internal and external aggression. This is the same West that has taken a sectional report to demand for Nigeria’s blacklisting as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).
The role of the Twitter was programmed to leverage on the would-have-been legitimate concerns of some Nigerians against misdeeds of some police officers against citizens and take advantage of it to bring down the democratic government one year after the Sowore-led RevolutionNow coup plot believed to have been sponsored by the same West failed, because some elements – as now seen in the international conspiracy involving Nigeria’s Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Afenifere among others – do not want Muslim-Northerner in power. Sadly, the Map of Nigeria continues to prove these plotters a failure, as Southern Nigeria, all the geopolitical zones put together, do not match up to one-third of the North they persistently wage war of negative propaganda and international conspiracy against using ethnic and religious violence as blackmail. Many have even said this should be the time for Nigeria to decide which of Russia-China alliance or West it should stick to, should there be any mark of such blacklisting from USA this time around.
Busting misrepresentation of the Deborah, Owo Church incidents
The quick reference to Owo Church attack and unfortunate mob attack that killed Deborah Yakubu Samuel by these US Senators, who are now clearly anti-Nigerian good working just in furtherance to the West’s envy of the natural endowment of the Africa’s most populous country, easily vindicates those who have held that Christian Association of Nigeria is Nigeria’s representative of the West’s destabilization project for Nigeria. Those who so held have said CAN has done played this role well with all its Christianisation Agenda to depopulate the Muslim Ummah of Nigeria using all manners of hate speeches and unguarded utterances, unverifiable claims in press releases and staging of nationwide anti-Islam/North protests like it like at the buildup to 2015 and 2019 general elections, publicly urging Nigerians not to vote for Muslim candidate because, according CAN, he would convert Christians to Islam.
Lest this is passed, leader of the Muslim Ummah of Nigeria and Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, was first to issue statement to “totally condemn” the mob of Deborah and mob is a cross-country thing in Nigeria that government and its security agencies have continued fight against. Before the mob of Deborah, IPOB picked four Muslims of Igbo origin from Okigwe market centre in Imo State and took them to the bush and slaughtered them. The particular newspaper editor that went obtain condemnation of UK Government blowing it as lead story on its Saturday edition that time, which is not a bad idea, failed deliberately – it is the practice by Christian-dominated media – to even make good mention of the killing of those Muslims in South East Nigeria by the same IPOB that had the listening ears of these US Senators wanting Nigeria blacklisted for a purely untrue allegation of being anti-Christian state. Where is there the moral qualification of USA to lead the world into anything, therefore?
As for the Owo Church, it is on records that the reverend met on the alter was still alive. He was engaged in heated argument by the attackers who were said to have spoken thickly and seriously good English. No Fulani man that herds cows can do that. To clear the doubts everybody, this reverend father should be able to tell who the people he saw were but he and the Catholic Church, which had immediately issued press statement to merely declare them as “gunmen”, have continued to keep quiet because, immediately after the attacks, Afenifere already issued a press statement to say it was declaration of war by Fulani tribe of Nigeria against the Yoruba Land of South West of the country. That was even before the state governorm, Rotimi Akeredolu, returned from All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary election trip in Abuja same Sunday. And since then, claims including that of Amotekun, the regional security network, have been made about arrest of the killers they had blamed Federal Government for calling terrorists but they have continued to speak on the identities of people they arrested. They would have easily announced if the arrested killers were Fulani people, that is certain. Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has, however, demanded for the Amotekun to disclose the identities of the Owo Church killers but US Senators have cited that uncertain as one of the reasons they want Nigeria to be blacklisted as anti-Christian state.
The reference by the US congressmen also exposed their connection with CAN’s hate for Fulani of Nigeria as if Fulani, which Southern Nigerians call Nigeria’s number one enemy, was solely behind the agitation that sent them (the West) away as colonial masters of the country in 1960. More sadly, CAN, which is supposed to be partner in moving Nigeria forward along united and peaceful lines as co-leader of Nigerian Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) established by Olusegun Obasanjo’s government and now re-engineered by President Muhammadu Buhari Administration, has been seen to play double standard as it never allowed resolutions of NIREC for the peaceful co-existence among Muslims and Christians of Nigeria to work with its activities as now obviously seen.
History, however, will continue to show the great role the leadership of the Muslim Ummah and Presidents of Nigeria from the biggest region that is Northern Nigeria have played to keep Nigeria together in prosperity, religious freedom and economic security. The US Senators shot themselves in the foot by not asking questions before they accept the falsehood being presented to them about religious intolerance on the part of Muslims by Christian Association of Nigeria leadership, who have ensured that Muslims will not have access to quality education, paid job for a good living and enjoyment of social amenities for as long as those things are under the control of Christians they influence.
Posterity will also be the judge between CAN, IPOB, Afenifere and their international collaborators wanting to destabilize Nigeria at all cost and doing it, even, despite the good work the leadership of the Muslim Ummah is doing under Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar. He brought the country back to level of mutual understanding, unity and peaceful co-existence among all ethnic and religious backgrounds, despite many revealing negative roles of CAN and those ethnic nationalities, who must not be see Muslim or Northerner being reported to be doing well.
It is part of the reasons President Buhari’s achievements are being claimed to be unseen and it is because these (smaller groups of South), implementing both Christianisation Agenda of CAN driving it with their ethnic sadism against Northerners control the media knowing the lack of media power as weakness of the North.
It is also the reason Afenifere never had any Muslim on its membership because, those who parade themselves as Yoruba social cultural leaders do not believe Muslims exist in South West just like in Igbo Land, as seen in pronouncement of the terrorist group, IPOB, they fully backed even with the wealth of Nigeria, there must be no symbol of Islam talkless Muslims in the South East region would have the religious freedom to practice their religion. If America is truly the flagbearer for democracy, how come these US Senators chose selective sources for information gathering if not that they something behind the scene to actualize the West’s aims and objectives of collapsinig Nigeria?
