Catholic Bishop’s Passionate Plea to the U.S. that Angered Nigerian Muslim Leaders and Government

He also recounted the situation in northern Nigeria that is witnessing an increasing number of kidnappings of Catholic Priests for reasons other than ransom, as well as the forceful closure of all schools in some parts of the region, including Catholic institutions, for the whole period of Ramadan.

The Bishop of Makurdi highlighted the need to ensure that people who have been displaced by terrorists across the country are allowed back to their ancestral homes, instead of the government resettling them elsewhere while Islamists occupy their ancestral lands.

“Concretely, I request and I plead, I ask you to redesignate Nigeria as a country of particular concern,” Bishop Anagbe said, and continued, in his address to the Africa Subcommittee, “This has both a practical and diplomatic meaning, to signal that you are paying attention to what happens to us and elsewhere in the world.”

The Nigerian member of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CMF/Claretians) said that policies that the Nigerian government is trying to put in place to relocate the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in camps are “not durable” and “will not work.”

“The government already has the population that is not able to take care of, and then you have over millions of people in the camps, and you want to relocate them to where,” he posed.

“I feel the government is complacent on this issue,” the Nigerian Catholic Bishop lamented about the displacement of Christians, especially in Benue State, which is partly served by his Episcopal See of Makurdi.

He added, “I implore this august body to insist on the return and rehabilitation of all the IDPs in their ancestral lands and not to relocate them to other constructed camps elsewhere, which is an invented solution now being pushed by in the Benue State Government, and I tell you, Nigerian government can do that…This is my plea.”

Bishop Anagbe recounted to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee how Nigeria and Benue State had become some of the most dangerous and insecure places for Christians, with Islamist extremists “fiercely contesting the possession, control and governing law of the land.”

He said that extremists have increased activity especially in the country's northern and central regions, the latter of which is where Benue is located. Here, he said, there are constant ethnic, political and religious conflicts over land.

“Constitutionally, we are a secularist country, but our unity has been fragile,” the Nigerian Bishop said, further lamenting that in most affected places in the country, political and religious actions, as well as public speech “have been carefully managed to avoid acquisitions of religious bias and political tensions.”

“Today, the clear influence of Islamist extremists has changed the traditional social dynamics of tribe, ethnicity, religion and the social status in Nigeria,” he said.

Expressing concern over closure of Christian schools in northern Nigeria for Ramadan, in particular, the Catholic Bishop said, “Which other country in the world does that? Saudi Arabia is not doing it, Afghanistan is not doing it, Baghdad is not doing it, but then Nigeria is practicing. What kind of Islam are they practicing?”

“Twelve States!” he expressed his bewilderment concerning closure of schools in Katsina, Bauchi, Kebbi and Kano States, and added, “Yet not only Muslims are living in these places.”

Bishop Anagbe decried what he described as an agenda to decimate the Christian population in Nigeria, saying, “A long-term Islamic agenda to homogenize the population has been implemented over several presidencies through a strategy to reduce and eventually eliminate the Christian identity of half of the population.”

He says the strategy includes both violent and non-violent actions such as the exclusion of Christians from positions of power and adoption of church members, the raping of women, the killing and expulsion of Christians, the destruction of churches and farmlands of Christian farmers, followed by the occupation of such lands by the Fulani herders.

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In some instances, he said, the Fulanis are going ahead to rename the villages they “conquer”, stripping the indigenous owners of their identity. “You clearly see an expansionist approach,” he said.

“The quest for Islamization appears high on the agenda of some of the powerful and influential Muslims in Nigeria,” the Bishop asserted, expressing concern about what he described as “the haemorrhaging of Christian farmers from the central region of Nigeria and Benue state.”

In Makurdi Diocese in particular, the Catholic Bishop, who has been at the helm of the Diocese since March 2015 narrated the experience of Christian farmers who he said are forced to abandon their fertile lands.

He described militant Fulani herdsmen as “terrorists” who are executing the strategy to take land from Christians in their campaign to spread Islam in Nigeria.

“They steal and vandalize,” Bishop Anagbe said about the Fulanis operating in Benue State, and continued, “They kill and boast about it. They kidnap and rape. And they enjoy total impunity from the elected authorities.”

He found it regrettable that none of those terrorizing Christians in Nigeria has been arrested and brought to justice.

The Islamists’ impunity, he said, is supported by Nigeria’s corrupt system, as well as the growing poverty that allows terrorists to easily attract more recruits and prey on more victims. 

He said that in villages served by Makurdi Diocese in Benue state, Fulani herders operate “more like hired guns” of powerful cattle owners, who manipulate religion to rally the herders to eliminate the Christian population and cleanse the land in the name of Islam.

The Nigerian Catholic Bishop found it unfortunate that whenever an attack happens, and the Christian villagers call for help from the police and the army, no help comes.

“At the end of 2024, several villages were warned by the attackers of the upcoming violence, and the leaders called the police for defense ahead of time, but they did not come and the Christian massacres, almost customary, took place in Plateau and Benue,” he said.

He recounted incidents in which Catholic parish buildings, clinics, schools and other facilities in embattled regions in Nigeria had been burnt down in the war against Christians in the country, where he said Fulani herdsmen “follow orders to conquer, kill, and occupy.”

He said that the terrorists attack even those who have managed to escape into IDP camps, leaving them with no place to run to.

“People are now living in the pool of their blood,” Bishop Anagbe said, and added, “What I have recounted is happening not only in Benue State. I believe our experience in Benue is symptomatic of what is happening elsewhere in large parts of Nigeria.”

He spoke courageously about “a church under Islamist extermination” in Nigeria.

“Apart from the violent campaigns and attacks against Christian villages, there are now attempts by the Islamic Council of Nigeria and various Islamic groups to impose Sharia law on the Christian populations,” he said, and added, “It is frightening to live there.”

“We live in fear because at any point it can be our turn to be killed, but to remain silent is to die twice. So, I have chosen to speak,” Bishop Anagbe said, and added, “I speak on behalf of the millions who are in the camps.”

“We have to talk for the defenceless,” the Bishop of Makurdi said, and added, “We have to talk about the weak and those who cannot talk about themselves…I speak on behalf of those whose loved ones have been killed, but no one has even offered a word of consolation to them.”

He continued, “I speak on behalf of the thousands of young girls who have been adopted and raped because no one, not even the media, mentions them anymore. Foremost, I speak on behalf of my flock who are unable to worship freely and unable to return to their ancestral farms and homes because that land has been ruthlessly taken from them by the armed herdsmen.”

Reacting to Bishop Anagbe’s presentation to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, Africa Subcommittee, the Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC) described the Catholic Bishop’s sentiments as “Islamophobic tropes just to provide propagandist justification for United States to designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern”.

In a report on March 20, MPAC’s Chairman, Disu Kamor, claimed that it is, in fact, Muslims who are suffering the most in the ongoing terrorism in Nigeria.

“By all accounts, Muslim Nigerians have been the greatest victims of terrorism in Nigeria with many killed, displaced, and traumatized by Boko Haram and other extremist groups,” he claimed, and continued, “There are also numerous newspaper reports of Christian terrorist groups, sometimes dressed in Muslim attires, caught planting explosives in churches or attacking Christian populated areas.”

The Muslim leader called for action to be taken against “these peculiar faith leaders accountable for their utterances and actions that threaten national peace and unity”, and for the international community “to be cautious of misinformation and to verify facts before making any decisions that may harm the people of Nigeria.”

Faced with possible sanctions should Nigeria be designated as a CPC, the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed its commitment to tackle the insecurity in the country, claiming that attacks especially in the northern parts do not only target Muslims.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs wishes to express strong concern over the recent wave of misinformation and misleading reports regarding the supposed targeted killings of Christians in Nigeria,” Acting Spokesperson of the Ministry, Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, says in the report dated March 14.

He adds, “The unfortunate development is intended to influence foreign governments, especially the United States Government, to designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), due to the violence against Christians.”

“We strongly reject any attempts to wrongly designate the country, distort the narrative, or sow seeds of discord among our people,” the government official says, adding that Nigeria remains the “beacon of religious tolerance and coexistence in Africa.”

Meanwhile, Bishop Anagbe has called on Nigeria’s neighbours not to remain unmoved as Christians are driven outside the ancestral homes in the West African country, warning that a refugee situation in the region would be catastrophic.

“If there's an outbreak of war in Nigeria, no country around us, Chad, Niger, Ghana, Guinea, Togo, no country can contain the population that will flee to these places,” he said, and added, “No country can be able to house over five million refugees.”

“And if one million refugees run to Chad and Niger, they'll collapse the other country because there'll be no plan to take care of them,” Bishop Anagbe said, and appealed to Nigeria’s neighbours to use every means within their mandate to ensure that everyone is treated with dignity in the country.

“Consider that Nigeria can be your ally, but it cannot be one where half the population is in the process of being murderously eliminated,” the Nigerian Catholic Bishop said in his address to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Africa Subcommittee, on March 12.