An advocate movement, US Nigeria Law Group has called on Joe Biden US government to rescind the sanctions waiver granted Nigeria by the Trump administration and sanction violators of religious freedom.

USNLG made the call in a letter signed by its Spokesman, Emmanuel Ogebe and addressed to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on Friday.

The group which alleged several cases of religious freedom violation in Nigeria, hailed USCIRF on its 2021 Religious Freedom report on Nigeria which for the first time in many years it said fairly captured a bit of the persecution that Nigeria’s Christians are suffering.

The group commended the report on its revelations, unmasking how a current pro-Al Qaeda Nigeria cabinet member, Issa Pantami allegedly authorized the assassination of a Christian governor some years ago and how he was also implicated in the murder of a Christian student evangelist.

The group demanded for a visa ban and other sanctions on the Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Technology, Dr Isa Ali Pantami, over his past supports for terrorists groups, Al Qaeda and Taliban and extremists pronouncements.

It also called for sanction on anyone found guilty.

USNLG while congratulating USCIRF on the State Department’s designation of Nigeria in 2020 for the first time as a CPC as per recommendation, said that the sharia riots of 2000 which claimed thousands of lives and the Jos crisis of 2001 merited it more than 20 years ago.

Making observations on the USCIRF reports highlighted the following:

The report significantly omits the extreme cases of forced conversion of Christians by state actors mostly especially the viral video of fantastically corrupt Kano state governor Ganduje paying two girls to become Muslims. This is important to show that not only non-state actors and violent extremist organizations are persecutors in Nigeria so as to strengthen the case for CPC redesignation.

2. The report unpardonably omits the endemic abduction and forced marriage of teenage Christian girls in northern Nigeria by non-terrorists. Copious cases abound including Habiba taken in Katsina at age 14 and still not returned five years later despite police reports, lawsuits and reports to the emir and Governor. Indeed it has just happened again now. https://www.facebook.com/123852348215168/posts/822973038303092/ https://www.nationalupdate.com.ng/hacfo-on-how-aisha-was-forcefully-abducted-converted-and-married-off-with-consent-of-emir/. These Christian girl abductions are just a local version of the infamous Chibok terror mass abductions seven years ago last week which took 90% Christian schoolgirls.

In our letter to the US Secretary of State last year, we similarly noted:

“The report did not recognize a recurring phenomenon where Christian girls are abducted, islamized and forced into marriage. This travesty though made infamous by the abduction of almost 300 schoolgirls from the Christian town of Chibok in 2014, was merely a large scale extrapolation by a Violent Extremist Organization (VEO) that is done by local Muslims in northern villages sometimes, with the support of emirs and state governors.”

3. The report shockingly omitted the arrest and detention of Prof Solomon Tarfa for the whole of 2020. Tarfa a missionary arrested from his orphanage in Kano on Christmas Day 2019 was released two days after the US designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern. We had asked prior that you classify him a Prisoner of Conscience for his persecution in our letter thus: “In Kano State, NAPTIP, a US-funded Nigerian government agency arrested the Head of a Christian orphanage, Prof Tarfa on Christmas day and he has remained imprisoned ...as persecution for suspected proselytization of Muslim children. However despite the evidence that the children are all Christians, the government shut down the Du Mercy orphanages in two states, took away the children and filed bogus charges against Professor Tarfa. US-taxpayers must be incensed that at least twice last year, an agency supported with American funds participated in the persecution of innocent Christians.”

Prof Tarfa is still on trial on bogus charges and Kano state government has the Christian orphans in a Muslim orphanage while the Kaduna state government demolished his Du Mercy orphanage while he was in prison.

The detention of Prof Tarfa received attention in the UK House of Lords but not USCIRF even though a US-funded agency initiated his dubious arrest. USCIRF did not designate him a Prisoner of Conscience despite being one of the most egregious cases last year. One of the Christian orphans has been seriously burnt in a fire at the government orphanage where they’re languishing.

4. This year’s report continued to ignore the systematic discrimination against Christians in government appointments.

Last year we noted, “Buhari runs a National Security Council that is 90% Northern muslim in further violation of the constitutional provisions on fair representation creating a system where the security concerns of Christians are not adequately addressed or represented.”

Ironically the State Department’s own human rights report called Gen. Buhari’s notorious nepotism important positions given to particular ethnic groups under Buhari: U.S.

5. The report omitted to mention Leah Sharibu, the world’s youngest Prisoner of Conscience and the first Nigerian so designated by USCIRF itself, who the terrorist announced as having given birth in captivity early last year.

As we stated last year, “The Government of Nigeria continued to fail to secure the release from terrorist captivity of Christian heroine schoolgirl Leah Sharibu since 2018 despite successfully securing the release of over 100 of her Muslim classmates after just one month of their abduction.” In 2020 the government again successfully recovered within a week hundreds of abducted Muslim school kids but failed to recover Leah.

Leah now has delivered a second son in captivity and Boko Haram attacked her hometown with deaths abductions and mass displacement of her relatives https://www.akelicious.net/7-killed-5000-displaced-by-shekau-faction-in-adamawa-state/

In conclusion we will address the individual commissioner minority reports:

6. Dear Commissioner Gary Bauer:

Thank you for again voicing strongly your passion and compassion for Nigeria’s persecuted.

Unlike the main report, you spoke out on the issue of endemic abductions of Christian schoolgirls poignantly capturing the daily dread of parents that their daughters won’t come back home.

We agree with you that, “The failure of many in the international human rights community and the Western media to accurately describe what is really happening in Nigeria is inexcusable.”

No climate change on earth can possibly justify the mowing down of innocent worshippers in church.

7. Dear Commissioner James Carr:

Thank you for your apt remarks that, “around the world, many now believe that religious freedom violations in Nigeria may be among the worst in the world, if not the worst.”

Nigeria has NEVER been a bastion of religious freedom. The worst killings of Christians at the inception of USCIRF occurred in the Sharia riots of 2000 and over the last 20 years Nigeria has consistently accounted for high Christian mortality making it the deadliest place in the world to be a Christian as we determined almost a decade ago.

We believe with you “that Nigeria is better than this.”

8. Dear Commissioner Johnnie Moore:

Your legendary commitment to Nigeria’s suffering including your epic fact-finding trip to Nigeria with us during the pandemic at great personal sacrifice last year and your books cataloguing the martyrdoms of this age, speak volumes.

We agree fully with you that, “The United States must recognize and correct its policy failures. Unfortunately, the perilous situation is now spreading more and more to other countries. Will it take a caliphate in West Africa to awaken the international community? The status quo is unsustainable.”

America’s truth-optional (not required and need not be applied) policy perspective on Nigeria has brought to the boil the melting pot to the melting point.

9. We urge the Biden administration to rescind the sanctions waiver granted Nigeria by the Trump administration if Nigeria’s Terrorist minister Sheikh Patami is not fired by President Buhari by the end of this month.

10. On behalf of the families of martyrs, orphans, widows and the persecuted, we thank you for amplifying their voices.

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