By EMMANUEL OGEBE

In the run up to the US Africa Summit, a DC lobbyist quipped, “who invites Africa’s presidents to Washington in the cold winter?” And during the World Cup too…

As the Summit ended, it was more than bad timing for soccer and the weather that were greater concerns.

Literally days after the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the US showed exactly how devalued it has become in a diplomatic charms race with China for Africa.

Africa’s human rights abuse portfolio is vast and varied but Nigeria, it’s largest by population, economy and trade with US, is an apt case study of what’s going wrong in Washington.

Secretary of State Blinken just issued designations of countries with Religious Freedom violations pursuant to the IRF Law. Nigeria, the deadliest country in the world for Christians for nine out of the last ten years, was conspicuously absent from the entire State Department rankings on which it has consistently appeared for 20 years prior to President Biden’s administration.

Besides religious freedom, Gen. Buhari cemented himself as the worst enemy of free speech in Nigeria’s history. As an ’80s military dictator, he banned local news media and jailed journalists but as president now he banned global social media Twitter, criminalized public commentary and jailed citizens. There are at least half a dozen Nigerians on death row, imprisoned, assaulted, raped, missing and possibly even state-murdered in northern Nigeria in recent times – for social media posts.

The week before the US Summit, as World Cup players kicked balls, Nigeria’s First Lady Aisha Buhari kicked Aminu Adamu a college student for tweeting that she fed fat on the money of the poor.

He was tortured at the same presidential villa where I was tortured as a young human rights lawyer by a military junta before my exile to America 25 years ago. Aminu’s case is traumatically reminiscent of my horrifying abduction – me for sending a fax then and him for sending a tweet now.

The sheer criminality, impunity and horror of these Saddam-like actions cannot be overstated and yet President Biden described President Buhari as “a model of democracy.”

It gets worse. While Buhari was being praised by Biden, Reuters reported mass killings of thousands of kids by his troops.

While it is not unusual for African presidents to have mixed reviews, it is what happened before the summit that makes a mockery of US policy.

The State Department’s blackout of Nigeria’s religious freedom crises came weeks after ordering the unprecedented evacuation of most American diplomats and their families out of Abuja due to Islamists bombing attempt on American diplomats’ homes in Nigeria – and Buhari’s inability to secure them!

Buhari’s delegation stayed in DC hotels alongside hundreds of US diplomats displaced from Abuja for six weeks. The US denial of the ongoing religious genocide by sacrificing hurting American families was an early Christmas gift to Nigeria at an unspeakable cost. It’s one thing to exchange a Russian convict for an American Olympian but trading Nigerians and Americans to appease terror over China is reprehensible.

The State Department’s State of Denial by the non-reporting continues to claim the lives of Nigerians needlessly and threaten the lives of Americans through intellectual dishonesty and diplomatic fraud. The Nigeria Religious freedom report just “disappeared” the way critics in dictatorships do. As Dr King said, “injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere!”

In a perfect epitaph to the Biden administration’s burial of religious freedom in Nigeria, during the summit Kano state sentenced to death by hanging an Islamic cleric, Abduljabbar Nasiru Kabara, for blasphemy.

Outrageous as this is, Nigeria is not an equal opportunity abuser as he didn’t get jungle Justice and even got a Court arraignment that Deborah Emmanuel never got when she was burned alive. The Christian college student was murdered for a post in her class Whatsapp group as grotesquely as Iranian Mahsa Amini but with starkly less global attention.

In addition to Deborah Emmanuel, I am also honoring American victims of religious terrorism in Nigeria by name. This article is dedicated to Deborah and Vernice, my colleague, an American attorney who as a diplomat at the United Nations building in Abuja, survived its suicide bombing by Boko Haram the day we were supposed to meet in 2011. We remember you when your countries do not.

•Emmanuel Ogebe, an international human rights lawyer (and former Nigerian political prisoner) is a US Nigeria affairs expert and writes from Washington DC USA

Update news