US CONGRESSIONAL REPORT ON NIGERIAN CHRISTIAN “GENOCIDE”
On 23 February, US Congressman Riley Moore and his colleagues submitted a two-page report titled “Ending Christian Persecution in Nigeria” to the White House with a list of recommendations for President Donald Trump.
As I perused the report, I couldn’t help but shake my head at some of the blatant falsehoods and half-truths that pervade the two-page document.
To the uninitiated, the report gives the impression that Nigeria is largely a Muslim country with a beleaguered and oppressed Christian minority. In reality, Nigeria’s 115 million Christians constitute half of the population. Christians are well-represented at all levels of government, and currently dominate the leadership of Nigeria’s armed forces and security services.
The report’s assertion that Nigeria is the “deadliest place to be a Christian” is absolute nonsense. The vast majority of Christians live in Southern Nigeria, where there is zero jihadi violence.
In certain parts of Northern Nigeria, Boko Haram terrorists indiscriminately attack the Muslim majority and the local Christian minority, branding the latter as “infidels” for not adhering to the Islamic faith and the former as “apostates” for rejecting the Revolutionary Salafist version of Sunni Islam.
The Congressional report calls on the Trump Administration to “demand” that the Nigerian government abolish Sharia Law in the twelve states where it is implemented. In my own opinion, Trump is free to make as many demands as he likes, but doing so would be an exercise in futility. Bola Tinubu is the President of a federation of 36 autonomous states, not an absolute monarch presiding over a country with a centralised governmental structure.
In Nigeria, the federating states enjoy a wide range of autonomy. Each state has its own executive, legislative and judicial systems, which are quite distinct from those of the national government. As much as Riley Moore and Donald Trump might desire it, President Tinubu cannot force the twelve Northern states that operate the criminal code of Sharia Law to rescind it.
In fact, I believe that the Trump Administration has a higher chance of forcing Democrat-ruled US states and cities to revoke their “sanctuary laws” than getting any of those 12 Northern Nigerian states to give up Sharia Law.
As a Roman Catholic from Southeastern Nigeria, I am no apologist for Sharia Law. In fact, if it were within my power, there would be no religious laws in Nigeria at all. However, the civil code of Sharia Law has been an integral part of Northern Nigeria’s legal framework since British colonial rule. The British themselves derived the truncated version of Sharia from the pre-colonial sovereign state—Sokoto Caliphate (1804-1903)— which disintegrated after its territory was conquered and divided among British, French, and German colonial powers. Given its deep roots in Northern Nigeria, it is ludicrous for anybody to think that external pressure can eradicate Sharia Law in its entirety.
Having chafed for decades under a truncated version of the Sharia legal system, twelve Northern states decided to adopt the full version of the religious law that once formed the jurisprudence of the defunct Sokoto Caliphate. Between 1999 and 2001, the legislatures of those 12 states amended pre-existing Sharia Law to include criminal codes alongside civil codes.
The upgrade to the full version of Sharia has been deemed by many legal experts to have contravened the Nigerian Constitution, which specifies that secular law should apply exclusively in criminal cases. The constitution grants Sharia Courts jurisdiction only over civil proceedings involving Islamic personal law, such as marriage, inheritance, child custody, and divorce.
After the contentious adoption of the Sharia criminal code by those 12 states, Sharia Courts—previously limited to civil and personal affairs—suddenly acquired the authority to prosecute and convict Muslims for perceived crimes. These religious courts began issuing harsh sentences such as amputation for burglary, flogging for alcohol consumption, and stoning for adultery. Under secular law, adultery and alcohol consumption are not considered crimes.
Nigeria’s president at the time, Olusegun Obasanjo—a Baptist Christian from the Southwest—criticised the enactment of Sharia criminal codes by the legislatures of the 12 Northern states, but opted against challenging their constitutionality in the Supreme Court. President Obasanjo feared that a legal battle would trigger civil unrest among the Muslim majority in those states. He publicly justified his non-confrontational stance by claiming that the bandwagon craze for the adoption of Sharia criminal codes in North will “fizzle out on its own.” He also added that he had extracted pledges from the governors of the 12 states not to implement the full version of Sharia enacted by their legislatures.
Only three of the twelve states honoured the pledge by opting not to actively enforce the religious criminal codes passed by their legislatures. In those outlier states—all in the Northeast—the Sharia legal system has de facto limited itself to civil and personal matters. Secular law continues to govern criminal offences, rendering the Sharia criminal codes dormant on the statute books.
The promises made to Obasanjo by the governors of the remaining nine states to not implement Sharia in full proved to be empty. Some governors were unwilling to sacrifice political capital over an issue so popular with their Muslim electorate. Others derived their very legitimacy by paying lip service to the idea of implementing Sharia penal codes. Ultimately, almost none wanted to enter a collision course with state legislatures hell-bent on enshrining religious criminal codes into law. Only one governor among the nine was brave enough to resist public pressure and defy his state’s legislature, yet even he could not halt the Sharia juggernaut.
In contrast to the three Northeastern states mentioned earlier, religious courts in the remaining nine states—seven in the Northwest, one in the North-Central, and one in the Northeast—aggressively enforce the Sharia penal codes. It is within these nine states that high-profile cases involving “blasphemy” or “adultery” usually originate.
After Sharia Courts in Northwest Nigeria sentenced two Muslim women to death for “adultery” in 2002 and 2003, the Obasanjo Administration (1999-2007) faced intense pressure from the United States and Europe to abolish the Sharia criminal code. Obasanjo, however, maintained that such a demand was politically impossible, arguing that under Nigeria's federal system, he lacked the authority to unilaterally override state-level legislation. Nonetheless, domestic and international uproar created by the death sentences caused Sharia Courts of Appeal to nullify the death sentences and free the women.
Over the years, Sharia Courts in seven states have handed down death sentences to several Muslims, only to see these judgments stalled or retracted following domestic and international outcry. The ability of convicted Muslims to appeal to the Sharia Courts of Appeal, then to the secular Federal Court of Appeal, and finally to the Supreme Court of Nigeria makes it highly unlikely for capital sentences to be executed.
To date, all death sentences —except one— handed down by Sharia Courts have either been rescinded by Sharia Appellate Courts or annulled outright by secular federal courts. The only exception was the enforcement of a death sentence in January 2002 for a man convicted in a Sharia Court of murdering a woman and her two children.
Contrary to the impression created by Congressional report prepared by Riley Moore and his colleagues, the primary victims of “blasphemy laws” enforced by Sharia Courts are Muslims. Christians are exempt from Islamic law and thus cannot be brought before a Sharia Court for any reason at all. Christians can only be prosecuted in secular courts.
Having said that, there are Muslim extremists who disregard the legal exemptions, subjecting Christians to harassment, and in the most extreme cases, extrajudicial killings. One example is the May 2022 murder of a Christian student, Deborah Samuel Yakubu, by a lynch mob of Muslim extremists, who alleged that she had committed “blasphemy”.
Abolishing “blasphemy laws” or the the broader Sharia framework—as recommended by the Congressional report—won’t have any impact on Muslim extremists, who operate entirely outside the statutory legal system and reject the authority of the Nigerian state. The murderers of Deborah Yakubu were guided solely by their personal religious convictions and couldn’t care less what the law said about “blasphemy”. Moreover, Deborah did not say anything that could have been remotely construed as offensive in Islam.
The solution to the problem of religious harassment in Northern states implementing the Sharia criminal code is rigorous federal police enforcement of existing legal exemptions and the swift prosecution of Muslim extremists who trample on the rights of Christians.
Congressman Riley Moore’s impractical recommendation that the United States pressure the Tinubu Administration to abolish Sharia Law across the 12 states is born of a profound ignorance of Nigeria’s history, its federal system, and its political culture.
A prominent Muslim organisation in Nigeria known as the Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria (SCSN) has already reacted to the Congressional report by issuing a combative statement asserting that “no authority in the world had the right to prevent Nigerian Muslims from observing the tenets of Sharia.” In essence, the SCSN is telling the Americans that they have a greater likelihood of squeezing an elephant through the eye of a needle than removing Sharia Law from the statute books.
Prominent Nigerian Muslim commentators have also highlighted that Riley Moore and his colleagues have a lot to say about religious laws in Northern Nigeria and nothing to say about the much harsher Sharia criminal codes enforced in Saudi Arabia— a major ally of the United States.
For the crime of criticising Donald Trump’s promotion of the absurd “Christian genocide” narrative, prominent Nigerian politician Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso is being smeared as a “Muslim extremist sponsoring militias” by Riley Moore. The Republican legislator is currently sponsoring a bill in the US Congress titled the “Nigeria Religious Freedom and Accountability Act of 2026’ (H.R. 7457)”. Should this bill pass, Rabiu Kwankwaso and other individuals labelled “extremists” could face severe sanctions, including visa bans and asset freezes.
In case you were wondering, this is the same Rabiu Kwankwaso who, as governor of Kano State in 2000, incurred the wrath of his Muslim electorate when he attempted to block a legislative bill that would place Sharia criminal codes on the statute books. Although he eventually signed the bill into law, his political career suffered a significant setback. He lost the April 2003 Kano State gubernatorial election to Ibrahim Shekarau, the opposition candidate, who promised rigorous enforcement of the Sharia criminal codes.
Before the 2003 gubernatorial election, Muslim voters in Kano had complained that Rabiu Kwankwaso was deliberately implementing the religious criminal codes on the statute books in a reluctant and haphazard manner. The small Christian minority—legally exempt from Sharia Law—supported Rabiu Kwankwaso, but their votes did not register as a blip in a state with an overwhelming Muslim electorate.
True to his campaign promise, the first order of business for the newly elected Governor Ibrahim Shekarau was the creation of a state-controlled religious police board known as the “Hisbah”. This board was tasked with rigorously implementing the Sharia codes that Rabiu Kwankwaso and the secular Nigeria Police Force were uninterested in.
When Riley Moore is not busy smearing Rabiu Kwankwaso with the legislative bill pending in the US House of Representatives, he is collaborating with his fellow Republicans to shoehorn America’s geopolitical struggles into a report purportedly about “Christian persecution in Nigeria”.
You win no prizes for guessing that Riley Moore’s report recommends Nigeria effectively cease its diplomatic, defence, and economic cooperation with China and Russia. The report goes as far as accusing China of funding terrorists and bandits murdering Nigerian Christians. Unsurprisingly, the report proposes that Nigeria join forces with the United States to take action against China.
Riley Moore and colleagues also seek to dismantle the 60-year-old defence partnership between Nigeria and USSR/Russia. Their report recommends that the Tinubu Administration “divest” from Russian military hardware and instead prioritize American-supplied defense systems, effectively granting the United States a monopoly over Nigeria’s arms market.
The Tinubu Administration responded to the Congressional report by firmly rebutting claims of “Christian persecution”, highlighting the role of Nigeria’s armed forces in combating the twin threats of banditry and terrorism that affect both Christian and Muslim communities in the North. Nonetheless, the administration was effusive in its praise of Nigeria’s bilateral relations with the United States—a stance that should come as no surprise to any astute observer.
Under President Trump, the United States has been exceptionally cooperative, providing a significant amount of sophisticated weaponry that has been long sought after by the Nigerian military. The Pentagon has also granted access to Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) data from radars, satellites, and drones. The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) and Nigerian Army Aviation Corps (NAAC) are going to receive brand new US-made helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, drones, missiles, and other pertinent military equipment. More than 200 US military instructors have arrived to assist with training and guidance for Nigerian infantry troops.
The fleet of twelve A-29 Super Tucano planes, custom-built for the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), has proven to be highly effective and central to Nigeria’s counter-insurgency operations. They have the ability to loiter in the sky for 7 hours without need for refuelling. Nigeria’s fleet of jet aircraft are not designed to loiter and need refuelling after 1-2 hours of operation.
The Nigerian government invested around $593 million to procure those propeller-driven planes, and allocated an additional $38 million for the US Army Corps of Engineers to oversee the upgrade the NAF base where the aircraft are stationed.
A flight simulator annex, a new airfield, secure storage areas for precision-guided munitions, perimeter security fencing, and aircraft sunshades were among the several critical facilities covered by the upgrade.
The Super Tucano’s laser-guided munitions, integrated FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared) cameras, and advanced sensors have enabled surgical strikes against high-value targets. This capability was instrumental in the elimination of ISWAP terrorist commanders such as Mallam Ari, Ameer Malam Jidda, and Abou Aisha between 2022 and 2026.
The recommendation in the Congressional report that Nigeria should foster closer relations with the United States appears somewhat redundant, given that the Tinubu Administration has already invested over $1.7 billion in acquiring US-made weapons and deepened ties with the mercurial Orange Strongman in the White House.
The report’s recommendation that Nigeria should give up its strategic partnership with China would be politely ignored. Tinubu has a very long history of cooperating with China, which goes back to his days as governor of Lagos State. He is never going to shut down the special presidential office established to coordinate collaborative projects with Zhongnanhai within the framework of the China-Nigeria Strategic Partnership.
Of course, I don’t rule out PresidentTinubu throwing Riley Moore and his colleagues a bone by staging an elaborate song and dance routine the next time some private Chinese citizens are apprehended for illegal gold mining in Sokoto and Zamfara states, rather than quietly deporting them as has been the standard practice for years.
Obviously, the Tinubu Administration won’t have any problem with Riley Moore’s recommendation that Nigeria cooperate with the UK, France and Hungary. Nigeria has good diplomatic and economic relations with those European countries.
France and UK are buying lots of Nigerian petroleum at a time when traditional customers, such as China and South Korea, are cutting back on purchases. Additionally, the British Royal Marine Commando provides regular training to the SBS forces of the Nigerian Navy.
Overall, Nigeria’s armed forces have longstanding military training agreements with UK, USA, India, Pakistan, Turkey, China and Russia. While not a traditional military partner, Italy is currently training Nigerian Air Force pilots and engineers to operate the fleet of M-346FA fighter-attack jets purchased by the Nigerian government at the cost of $1.2 billion.
As stated in previous articles, many African countries prefer a multi-vector approach to foreign policy. This includes Central Africa Republic, which signed a cooperation agreement with France while simultaneously inking a deal with the Kremlin to establish a Russian military base on its territory.
The military junta in Niger Republic sought unsuccessfully to maintain its defence agreement with the Americans while bringing in Russian paramilitaries. However, the zero-sum mentality of the Biden Administration forced the junta to choose between US troops and the Russian paramilitaries.
Despite opting for the Russian paramilitaries and requesting the withdrawal of US troops, Niger Republic has managed to maintain amicable diplomatic relations with the United States. After all, many of the military junta leaders were trained by the US Army.
As I write this, news has arrived that the Traoré-led military junta in Burkina Faso has signed a five-year bilateral deal with the Trump Administration to support the West African country’s efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases.
News of rapprochement between Trump and Traoré may come as a shock to alternative media pundits who regularly claim the Sahelian states hate the “imperialist United States”. I have stated many times in the past that anti-French sentiment does not translate to dislike for the United States.
Longtime readers of this Substack will recall this passage from an old essay I wrote in July 2023:
I have read a couple of silly articles published by the Parisian media claiming that Russians are “brainwashing Africans and turning them against the French.”
It so hilarious when journalists in denial refuse to acknowledge the real reason why France is getting so much hate in Francophone Africa while the same isn’t happening to other NATO countries. There are no rallies in Francophone Africa against the United States of America or the United Kingdom.
Of course, when I made the statement back in July 2023, I was spot on. There had been no demonstrations in any of the ex-French colonies aimed at the United States. That was, until it happened in Niger Republic in April of the following year.
France has been at the receiving end of nearly all demonstrations in French-speaking Africa. In Burkina Faso, mass demonstrations degenerated into riots that resulted in the burning of French diplomatic properties. The military regimes of Mali and Burkina Faso both expelled French Ambassadors, shutdown French-owned NGOs and kicked out French troops stationed on their soil. The United States and other European countries did not suffer any of these indignities.
In Niger Republic, mass demonstrations were initially aimed exclusively at France until the Biden Administration began to issue public threats to the military junta, triggering a rare demonstration against the United States in April 2024.
The military regimes in Mali and Burkina Faso have never sought to expel American ambassadors on their territory. Despite their public rhetoric, both military juntas had tried unsuccessfully to develop ties with the United States, which they view differently from France.
In May 2021, the military junta of Mali expressed an interest in buying US weapons, but the Biden Administration was not interested. By October 2021, the Malian junta had pivoted to buying Russian military equipment. In December 2021, Russian Wagner mercenaries landed in Mali after the military junta signed a contract and paid Yevgeny Prigozhin a handsome fee.
Below is a video clip of Mali junta officials inspecting aircraft delivered by Russia to Modibo Keita International Airport in the capital city of Bamako. Those who have read my July 2023 article on Wagner activities in Africa may recall this footage recorded in 2022:
For those interested, I also covered the specifics of the different types of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft delivered in multiple shipments to Mali in an article from August 2022, which can be viewed by clicking here.
Unsurprisingly, the reaction of the Biden Administration to Russia’s shipment of advanced weaponry to Mali was apoplectic. The Malian junta had ignored repeated warnings from the US State Department not to purchase military equipment from Russia, which was under US and EU sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine six months prior. The next year, in July 2023, the Biden Administration imposed sanctions on Malian junta officials for “facilitating the expansion of Wagner in West Africa.”
With return of the highly transactional (and unpredictable) Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025, the ruling junta in Mali began to seek US investment and assistance to counter Islamist insurgents. As a goodwill gesture, the Trump Administration dropped Biden-era sanctions against Mali junta officials. News reports now indicate that the United States is close to securing a deal to resume intelligence-gathering flights and drone operations over Malian territory to help the military junta fight jihadi terrorists.
Unlike his predecessor, President Trump does not see the presence of Russian paramilitaries on Malian soil as an impediment to working out a deal with the ruling junta on security matters and minerals such as gold and lithium. From Trump’s perspective, Biden’s policy of non-engagement with the ruling junta was foolish as it allowed Russia to gain a monopoly of influence in Mali.
Yes, even the military regimes of Burkina Faso and Mali are now actively pursuing multi-vector foreign policies like other African countries.
Circling back to Nigeria, the Tinubu Administration will likely welcome constructive aspects of the Congressional report, especially its practical security recommendations for combating terrorism from jihadi groups and recurring banditry linked to ethnic Fulani Muslim cattle herders, who reject sedentary ranching in favour of their centuries-old nomadic lifestyle.
Contrary to the narrative often found in rightwing US media, Muslim Fulani banditry is a distinct phenomenon from Salafi-jihadi terrorism of Boko Haram and ISWAP. The jihadists seek to convert Nigeria into a revolutionary Islamist state while the Fulani bandits are just common criminals with a lot of firepower. It is also false that the Muslim Fulani bandits target Christians exclusively.
During their itinerant journey across the country in search of grazing grounds for their livestock, the nomadic cattle herders do not bother to inquire whether the agricultural lands they are encroaching upon belong to Muslim or Christian farmers. The bandits do not inquire about religious affiliation before massacring entire farming communities for resisting cattle feeding on their crops.
The religious identity of the victims is simply dictated by geography. In the Northwest, the victims of the Fulani bandits are almost entirely ethnic Hausa Muslim farmers, whereas in the North-Central and Southern regions, the violence predominantly affects Christian farming communities of various ethnicities.
Further complicating matters, a significant number of young Fulani bandits have grown disenchanted with a nomadic lifestyle split between crime and cattle herding, choosing instead to become full-time kidnappers for ransom. Money made from kidnapping is then used to buy semi-automatic rifles, walkie-talkies, and maintain a large fleet of motorcycles for mobility.
In summary, Muslims and Christians in Nigeria are targeted by:
Nomadic Fulani cattle herders encroaching on agricultural lands owned by farming communities throughout the North and parts of the South. These heavily armed bandits largely move on foot with their livestock.
Motorcycle-riding Fulani gangs that sustain themselves through ransom kidnappings. They target farming communities in Northwest Nigeria and parts of North-Central Nigeria. They do not operate in the South.
Salafi-jihadists who employ a strategy of murder and mass abduction to sustain Islamic terrorism, primarily in Northeast Nigeria. They move around in motorcycles and pickup trucks. Their sporadic appearances in North-Central and Northwest Nigeria has led to individuals confusing the ideologically-driven jihadists with profit-driven Fulani kidnappers more common in both regions. They don’t operate in the South.
Certainly, the nuance presented in this article holds little interest for Riley Moore and his colleagues, whose report frames Nigeria as a Muslim-dominated state with an oppressed Christian minority akin to Pakistan. Despite having visited Nigeria for several days in December 2025, the authors of the Congressional report chose to ignore the complexities they witnessed in favour of a more reductive narrative.
In any case, I believe that the true purpose of the report is to pressure Nigeria into granting United States a monopoly on the supply of military equipment and disrupt Nigeria’s longstanding ties with two friendly great powers that the Americans view as their geopolitcal rivals.
Unfortunately for Riley Moore and his colleagues, Nigeria won’t accept recommendations that circumvent the country's traditional multi-vector foreign policy. The notion that Nigeria should only engage with the United States, UK, and EU countries to the exclusion of China and Russia is a non-starter.
The Nigerian Air Force has not deviated from its intention to buy advanced air defence radars and anti-drone laser technology from China. The Nigerian Army is still going ahead with its contract with the Chinese state-owned Norinco Group to establish a military hardware production facility in Nigeria to produce various types of ammunition, including 7.62mm and 9mm cartridges, as well as the manufacturing of brass casings and bullet jackets. The contract also covers maintainance and modernization of existing battle tanks and other heavy hardware.
When it is finally esablished, the Chinese-owned Norinco facility will operate alongside Nigeria’s indigenous arms manufacturer, DICON, which produces its own natively designed armoured personnel carriers and other military vehicles, in addition to small arms and ammunition.
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