IV
118THCONGRESS
1
STSESSION H. RES. 82
Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the need to designate Nigeria
a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in and tolerating system-
atic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, the need
to appoint a Special Envoy for Nigeria and the Lake Chad region,
and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
JANUARY31, 2023
Mr. S
MITHof New Jersey (for himself, Mr. CUELLAR, and Mr. HILL) sub-
mitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on
Foreign Affairs
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the need to
designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for
engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egre-
gious violations of religious freedom, the need to appoint
a Special Envoy for Nigeria and the Lake Chad region,
and for other purposes.
Whereas in 2020, the Department of State designated Nige-
ria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) pursuant to
the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (22
U.S.C. 6401 et seq.), finding that it is ‘‘engaging in or
tolerating’’ ‘‘systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of
religious freedom’’;
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Whereas, in 2021 and 2022, the Department of State omit-
ted Nigeria from its CPC list;
Whereas, in 2022, the U.S. Commission on International Re-
ligious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that the De-
partment of State redesignate Nigeria as a CPC and
found the Department of State’s decision to delist Nige-
ria ‘‘inexplicable’’, and a result of ‘‘turning a blind eye’’
to that country’s ‘‘particularly severe religious freedom
violations’’;
Whereas USCIRF finds that ‘‘in Nigeria’s Middle Belt,
nonstate armed groups also conducted attacks on houses
of worship, religious ceremonies, and religious leaders,
with Christian communities and their churches hit par-
ticularly hard’’ and that ‘‘the Nigerian Government has
often failed to respond sufficiently to violence against re-
ligious leaders and congregations’’;
Whereas, in January 2023, Open Doors reported in Nigeria
there were ‘‘5,014 Christians killed in 2022, nearly 90
percent of the total number of Christians killed worldwide
. . . [and] almost 90 percent of kidnappings carried out
against Christians in 2022’’;
Whereas according to some experts, the northern-based
Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, a Fulani
herdsmen advocacy group, supports reestablishing a
Fulani empire, modeled upon the caliphate in northern
Nigeria established by Usman dan Fodio, in the early
19th century;
Whereas Nigeria is an ethnically and religiously diverse Fed-
eral State, and traditionally political power has been bal-
anced between Muslims and Christians, Northerners and
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Southerners, and among Nigeria’s 371 different ethnic
groups;
Whereas President Muhammadu Buhari has favored and pro-
moted fellow Fulani and other northern Muslim ethnic
groups, while many of Nigeria’s diverse ethnic and reli-
gious groups, including Igbo and Yoruba as well as
Christians and Shia Muslims, report they are denied
equal rights;
Whereas, on July 13, 2021, in testimony at a congressional
hearing before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commis-
sion by Bishop Matthew Kukah of Sokoto, representing
the Catholic Church in Nigeria, stated that the ‘‘Muslim
elite’’ ‘‘us[es] religion as a tool for political mobilisation’’,
and further stated that President Buhari shows a clear
preference for appointing ‘‘men and women of his faith’’;
Whereas departures from past conventions aimed at achieving
ethnic, religious, and geographic balance include the
forced replacement of then-Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court Walter Onnoghen with a Muslim jurist, and the se-
lection of Muslims as leaders of both houses of the na-
tional legislature;
Whereas President Buhari’s party, the All Progressives Con-
gress, in a departure from customary practice, nominated
two Muslims to its 2023 Presidential ticket, selecting as
vice presidential candidate Kashim Shettima, whose past
tenure as governor of Borno State was criticized for fail-
ing to adequately address jihadi violence perpetrated by
Boko Haram;
Whereas the Aid to the Church in Need reports that, since
early 2022 alone, 20 Nigerian Catholic priests have been
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kidnapped, 5 of whom were murdered, with many of
these attacks occurring on church grounds;
Whereas, on January 11, 2023, Bishop Lucius Iwejuru
Ugorji, president of the Nigerian Catholic Bishops’ Con-
ference, and four other bishops on the conference’s ad-
ministrative board met with President Buhari to appeal
for civil protections in Nigeria, stating, ‘‘[o]ur Church
personnel have been frequent victims in terms of kidnap-
ping or outright murder’’;
Whereas the Methodist Church reported on May 29, 2022,
that eight Fulani militants abducted and tortured its
head, Prelate Samuel Kanu-Uche, a chaplain, and Bishop
Dennis Mark of Owerri, who were released after paying
a $240,000 ransom, while the militants warned, ‘‘We will
finish you people and take over this land’’, according to
Bishop Kanu, who added, ‘‘They claimed that Nigeria be-
longed to Fulani’’;
Whereas imams were also abducted in 2022, according to Ni-
gerian media reports, with the chief imam of Masama-
Mudi village, Zamfara, being abducted from his mosque
on December 29, 2022, by unknown assailants, and an
imam being abducted in Zugu, Zamfara State, in a
mosque attack on September 2, 2022, reportedly by ‘‘ter-
rorists’’;
Whereas in northern and central Nigeria, near-weekly, violent
assaults on churches and their congregations are report-
edly carried out by designated terror groups, Fulani mili-
tants and other nonstate actors, who act with impunity;
Whereas northern Nigeria has seen the destruction of ‘‘over
17,000 churches since 2009’’ in attacks by Boko Haram
militants, Fulani herdsmen, and others, according to a
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2020 Vatican report of its interview of a Nigerian Catho-
lic civil rights expert, and in 2021, the Department of
State reported five attacks on mosques by unidentified
gunmen, bandits, and Boko Haram;
Whereas, for over a decade, Islamic terror organizations have
carried out mass murder, rape, kidnappings, and other
atrocities on Nigerians of various ethnic and religious
backgrounds, causing unspeakable suffering and displace-
ment, and the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) reports that this has resulted in over
3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in north-
eastern Nigeria, and 343,000 registered refugee Nige-
rians in the Lake Chad region;
Whereas terrorist group Boko Haram, whose name means
‘‘Western education is forbidden’’, kidnapped over 200
mostly Christian schoolgirls in 2014 in Chibok, Borno
State; 100 remain captive and are sexually abused and
pressured to convert to Islam, and Leah Sharibu, a
Christian, remains captive and enslaved following a ter-
rorist raid of her school, in Dapchi, Yobe State, in 2018;
Whereas the British All Party Parliament Group (APPG) re-
port of 2020 finds that some Fulani herders ‘‘dem-
onstrated a clear intent to target Christians and symbols
of Christian identity such as churches’’, and, during at-
tacks, shouted ‘‘Allah u Akbar’’, ‘‘destroy the infidels’’,
and ‘‘wipe out the infidels’’, and on January 15, 2023,
assailants reportedly attacked New Life for All Church in
Katsina, shooting and wounding the pastor and kidnap-
ping up to 25 in the congregation, including 5 women
and girls;
Whereas, on June 5, 2022, for the first time in southern Ni-
geria, a church was attacked during a Pentecost Sunday
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Mass, when terrorists massacred 40 worshippers and
wounded scores more in a shooting attack on St. Francis
Xavier Catholic Church in Owo City, in Ondo State, and
none of the suspects have been convicted and sentenced;
Whereas the Department of State mischaracterizes or incom-
pletely characterizes the increasing incidents of large
scale violence in Nigeria’s northern and central rural re-
gions as ‘‘communal clashes’’ between Muslim herders
and Christian farmers, solely attributable to competition
for scarce natural resources resulting from climate
change;
Whereas USCIRF reports that ‘‘Fulani-affiliated armed
groups used religious rhetoric while conducting myriad
attacks on predominantly Christian villages in Kaduna
State’’, and that ‘‘[k]idnappers also reportedly delib-
erately targeted Christians for abduction and execution’’;
Whereas USCIRF concludes that the Nigerian Government
has ‘‘routinely failed to investigate these attacks [on
Christian communities] and prosecute those responsible,
demonstrating a problematic level of apathy on the part
of state officials’’;
Whereas the UNHCR reports that there are over 2.1 million
IDPs in northeastern Nigeria, and 304,562 registered
refugee Nigerians in the Lake Chad region;
Whereas USCIRF cites Nigeria’s Islamic blasphemy laws
among the reasons it lists Nigeria as worthy of CPC des-
ignation, given that Nigeria is one of only 7 countries
with criminal blasphemy laws that carry the death pen-
alty, with such laws existing in the 12 majority-Muslim
northern Nigerian States;
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Whereas, in 2020, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a Sufi musician,
was convicted of blasphemy after sharing lyrics on
WhatsApp and sentenced to death without legal represen-
tation in Kano; Muslim clerics, Abdul and Sheikh
Abduljabbar Nasiru-Kabara, are now on death row for
blasphemy in Kano; and Nigeria’s Humanist Association
and former Muslim Mubarak Bala received a 24-year
sentence for apostasy in 2022; and
Whereas, on May 12, 2022, Deborah Yakubu, a Christian
student, was beaten to death by a mob on her school’s
campus in Sokoto for alleged blasphemy against Islam on
WhatsApp, only two suspects were arrested on minor
charges, and for criticizing Yakubu’s murder, the Sultan
of Sokoto and Sokoto’s Catholic Bishop Matthew Kukah
faced serious death threats from others who acted with
impunity: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That— 1
(1) the Secretary of State should immediately 2
designate Nigeria a ‘‘country of particular concern’’ 3
for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, 4
and egregious violations of religious freedom, as 5
mandated by the International Religious Freedom 6
Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6401 et seq.); and 7
(2) in order to ensure that the Secretary of 8
State receives more complete and accurate reporting 9
and analysis, the President should promptly appoint 10
a person of recognized distinction in the fields of re-11
ligious freedom and human rights as ‘‘Special Envoy 12
for Nigeria and the Lake Chad Region’’ with the 13
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rank of Ambassador, who reports directly to the Sec-1
retary of State and coordinates United States Gov-2
ernment efforts to monitor and combat atrocities 3
there. 4
Æ
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