In the last months, the uneasy balance between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria has been heated to the point of boiling over. There is now direct evidence that this is connected to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
On Wednesday, Oct 15, in response to continued provocations, the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) issued a rare statement, “Let’s call a spade a spade about the enemies of Nigeria,” kicking back against the “recent false allegation circulating on some international platforms and the social media that there is a systematic genocidal campaign against Christians in Nigeria.” The “primary objective” of this campaign, the NSCIA claimed, “is to create an alibi for the ongoing genocide in the Gaza.” While the statement goes on to point to the internal (Nigerian) operatives who are, no doubt, contributing to worsening the situation, there is plenty to indicate that foreign unclean hands are also at work here.
On Aug. 10, a report was released by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety, located in the south-eastern Christian region of Nigeria) that asserted that jihadists had killed more than 7,000 Christians, and kidnapped a similar but still larger number of believers—in just the first eight months of this year. Ignoring that the majority of those killed by jihadists in Nigeria were actually northern Muslims, the report went on to say that the jihadists intend to kill an additional 112 million Christians (almost the entire Christian population) in the southeastern third of the country by 2050. The Intersociety report then demanded that international aid to Nigeria be suspended until the government (currently run by two Muslims, they don’t fail to note) showed its willingness to comply.
