Ms. Tiffany Lynch, a Senior Policy Analyst of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, has urged the United States to urgently speak out against some Nigeria’s politicians who have been threatening to make Nigeria a war zone if the outcome of the forthcoming 2015 elections does not turn out in their favour.
This position was made known during the US Confab on religious conflict in Nigeria which was held at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC on Tuesday.
She noted that these politicians could cause further damage through political and religious crises before, during or after the 2015 general elections if the Obama-led administration failed to tackle them at the appropriate time, stressing that the Nigerian government needed additional security personnel to protect northern Christian minorities and clerics and Muslim traditional rulers who denounced Boko Haram.
She pressed further that the US government should enter into a bidding agreement with the Nigerian government, as defined in Section 405(c) of the International Religious Freedom Act, setting forth commitments the government would undertake to address policies leading to violations of religious freedom.
In his keynote address, vice chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, said that all the conflicts in Nigeria could be attributed to statements made by some politicians shortly after the country’s 2011 general elections, noting that religious conflicts had taken Nigeria back in term of development and economic growth.
Furthermore, he said that Nigeria’s democracy was being tested by recurring sectarian violence, attacks and threats against Christians by Boko Haram, and the misuse of religion by politicians, religious leaders, and others in the country. “In a country where religion and religious identity are intertwined in ethnic, political, economic, and social controversies, these dynamics strain already tense Christian-Muslim relations” he noted.
Pressing further that Boko Haram benefited from this culture of impunity and lawlessness as it exploits religious tensions to destabilise Nigeria, Dr. Jasser recommended that Nigeria should be designated as a “country of particular concern.”
Although he said that the Nigerian government did not actively perpetrate religious freedom abuses, it often tolerates particularly severe violations, stressing that security agencies in Nigeria had always been reported to have participated in such severe violations.