On Wednesday, 17th of November, 2021, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, made a statement blacklisting Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Burma, Eritrea, Iran, China, The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK), Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan as religious violators. It became obvious that Nigeria had been delisted considering its inclusion in the same list in 2020.
This was not pleasing to the Christian Association of Nigeria as they voiced that Christians are still being persecuted by terrorist groups and other Islamic associations in the country.
Blinken, in his official visit to Abuja, Nigeria which ended on Friday, said that delisting Nigeria from the list of “Countries of Particular Concern” was based on facts.
However, the apex Christian organisation has said that it is at a loss on the data used by the United States government in arriving at such conclusion.
CAN in a statement on Saturday, 20th November 2021, frowned upon the move, insisting that the status quo has remained the same in Nigeria from the time it was on the list (2020) till date signifying no cause for its removal from the list of religious violators as Christians are still being violently attacked in the country.
The statement signed by CAN President, Rev Samson Ayokunle was titled, ‘CPC List: We Are At a Loss On the Data the US Government Used for the Delisting of Nigeria – CAN’.
The statement read in part, “The US government did not contact us when they were listing Nigeria among the countries of ‘Particular Concern’ on religious freedom, neither did they seek our opinion before removing Nigeria from the list. If they had done, we would have been able to compare the statistics then and now on the issue of freedom of religion in Nigeria.”
Favour Chiagozie Ebubechukwu is a staff reporter and creative writer with WAP. Resident in a city in West Africa, Favor is a promising African content writer with a focus to achieving relevant sustainable transformation goals of global development.
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