Far more innocent people have been slaughtered with far greater brutality in Nigeria than in Gaza. But because the victims in Nigeria are Christian and their murderers are predominantly Muslim, the Left and its media allies have shown little concern.
Much of the recent media attention to the plight of Christians in Nigeria surfaced only after the Trump administration began sounding increasingly urgent alarms about the violence. Much of the coverage also reads as if its primary purpose is to cast doubt on President Donald Trump’s warning that “they’re killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria.”
Trump is correct. But consider a headline from PBS News this week that declared, “Trump says Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria. Experts and residents say the reality is more complicated.” The outlet then sought to play up the religious diversity of the victims while underplaying the distinctly anti-Christian motivation for many attacks. Or how about Rolling Stone‘s Andre Gee suggesting that Nigerians reject claims of anti-Christian violence and then, absurdly, referencing an op-ed from a Nigerian government official as evidence for this. What of the countless Christian advocacy groups that have been sounding the alarm? Gee ignored them.
This effort to downplay Christian suffering stands in stark contrast to the daily onslaught of media coverage depicting Israel as committing a genocide against the people of Gaza.
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It is true that Nigerians of all religious identities, including many Muslims, have been afflicted by groups such as the fanatical Boko Haram terrorist organization. But it is also true, as Washington Examiner contributor Michael Rubin outlined recently, that successive Nigerian governments have ignored, facilitated, or actively supported pogroms against the country’s Christian minority population. Rubin also noted how former Secretary of State Antony Blinken indirectly encouraged these atrocities by removing Nigeria from the State Department’s religious freedom watch list.
Contrary to media evasion, the reality is clear. Attacks on Nigerian Christians are being perpetrated by a range of groups, including Boko Haram, the Islamic State, and other more informal groupings, such as gatherings of Fulani herdsmen. Many of these attacks have been motivated by a desire to drive Christians out of their homes and farming areas, eliminate Christian preaching and worship, and subjugate Christian communities to servitude or as prizes for ransom. The most reliable estimates suggest around 50,000 Christians have been slaughtered since 2011. But the slaughter is only one side of the blood ledger. Thousands of Christians have also been kidnapped, with young girls a particular target.
Like his predecessors, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has shown little interest in getting a grip on this crisis. He has failed to deploy military or security forces to confront the roving warbands wreaking havoc across his country. Tinubu has also been unwilling to hold army leaders accountable for failing to protect innocents. He has treated attacks on Christians as almost irrelevant inconveniences. Even then, the inconvenience is not that innocent people are being massacred, but rather that their plight might attract negative international attention.
It’s time for the Trump administration to impose consequences on Nigeria for its gross abdication of responsibility. The United States could, for example, restrict Nigeria’s access to the duty-free export benefits of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. It could also introduce visa restrictions and financial sanctions on Nigerian government and military officials, as well as their major financial backers. It could persuade allies to join in targeted sanctions on Nigeria’s critical energy export sector. Any of these steps would add immediate costs to the continued allowance of Christian slaughter, pressuring Nigerian officials to address that concern in fear of facing even greater costs to their own interests if they do not.
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Still, we should not lose sight of the Left’s moral hypocrisy in largely ignoring what is happening in Nigeria. Where criticizing Israel and its supposed “genocide” is fashionable and easy due to leftist political sympathies and Western media attention, paying heed to the murder of Christians in Nigeria is less powerful as a tool of social justice credential-building.
But that doesn’t mean a massacre isn’t happening, or that we shouldn’t seek action to address it.