At the International Religious Freedom Summit, now occurring in Washington, D.C., a Nigerian Catholic priest is shedding light on the ongoing massacre of Christians being perpetrated by Islamic terrorists known as the Fulani herdsmen. Father Ambrose Ekereku spoke about the violence against Christians in Nigerian in a breakout session focused on violations of religious freedom in Nigeria, Ukraine, and Armenia.
The New American has reported on the plight of Nigerian Christians many times, but the Biden administration has chosen to ignore it.
“What is happening in Nigeria is a systematic jihad, genocide and ethnic cleansing,” Ekereku told the gathering.
And it’s been going on for a while now, according to Ekereku.
“This thing is not new,” Ekereku emphasized. “What is going on now is not new.”
“Nigerians are being kidnapped, raped, maimed and butchered by these terrorists,” the priest exclaimed. “It’s not going to stop unless the international community comes to our aid.”
The plight of these African Christians doesn’t even appear to be a blip on the Biden administration’s radar. Over Christmas, hundreds of Christians were slaughtered in organized attacks reportedly committed by the Fulani herdsmen. Despite reports that Christians in Nigeria were being “killed for sport,” the Biden administration said nothing.
Many news outlets have suggested that the Fulani violence is about competition for resources brought on by climate change, a claim denounced by Ekereku.
“It is not. It is jihad that is going on. It is not farmer-herder clashes.” Ekreku stressed.
Father Benedict Kiely has echoed Ekreku’s concerns and has similarly blasted the notion that climate change has anything to do with the killings.
“This is the narrative of the post-Christian globalist West,” Kiely said previously. “How could they dare admit there is a genocide going on in Nigeria perpetrated by Muslims against Christians — it would demand action. I remember hearing the words of the Bishop of Ondo in Nigeria last year, when more than 40 of his people were killed at Pentecost Mass — he said ’40 of my people were not killed because of global warming, but because they were Christians.'”
Others have suggested that the climate change angle is a distraction from the real issue. Emeka Umeagbalasi, board chairman of the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law in Nigeria, has called the climate change claim a “lie” and a “false excuse.”
“The climate change mantra is the newest among over a dozen false excuses or lies cooked up by the central government of Nigeria to escape responsibility or divert world attention over the butchery. The climate change theorists have again failed just as they failed in all their previous concoctions,” Umeagbalasi said.
Writing in The European Conservative in early 2023, Kiely further ridiculed the notion that climate change had anything to with the systematic murder of Nigerian Christians early last year.
“The murders were mainly attributed to climate change,” Kiely noted. “The Muslim Fulani herdsmen ‘need’ to kill Christians, as they have been for many years, to find grazing land for their cattle. This ‘necessary’ depopulation for the sake of climate change apparently involves, burning churches that are filled with worshippers, the destruction of villages, rape, kidnapping and, as on Pentecost Sunday last year, shooting more than 40 people attending Mass.”
Far from addressing it, or even acknowledging that the anti-Christian violence exists, the Biden administration chose to remove Nigeria from its list of countries of particular concern for religious freedom violations last year.
Many are calling for Nigeria to be returned to the Countries of Particular Concern list but, according to Ekereku, that is not enough.
“Nigeria … should be designated as a terrorist government,” Ekereku said, adding the need to “take action and stop these killings.”
Open Doors, an organization that monitors the persecution of Christians, ranks Nigeria as the fifth most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, saying that the faithful are “terrorized with devastating impunity by Islamic militants and armed ‘bandits.'”
