A coalition group known as INTERNATIONAL COALITION AGAINST CHRISTIAN GENOCIDE IN NIGERIA (ICAC-GEN) has written a letter to American Government appealing for intervention in the ongoing onslaught against Christian majority trapped in Nigeria . In the letter released to BVI Channel 1,the President of the Coalition- Dr. Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe, PhD, DD, thanked President Donald Trump for the singular humane concern he has shown over time towards the plight of persecuted Christians in Nigeria and globally in general. The letter reads in full:
” Dear Rt. Hon. Marco Rubio,
DECLARE NIGERIA A CHRISTIAN MAJORITY NATION UNDER SIEGE BY A GOVERNMENT OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS IMPOSED BY PRESIDENTS BARACK OBAMA, AND JOE BIDEN
International Coalition against Christian Genocide in Nigeria (ICAC-GEN) is a United States registered non-profit 501(c) advocacy group. In accordance with the mission, aims, and objectives of our organization, we wish to bring to your urgent attention our earlier protest to President Joe Biden administration through the Secretary of State Rt. Hon. Antony Blinken over the persecution of Christians in Nigeria by Muslim leaders and their jihad agents and the failure of the Government of the United States of America to accord official recognition of the situation.
The protest letter dated January 18, 2024, was in response to the decision of the United States of America to exclude Nigeria from the global list of countries where Christians are grossly persecuted. Titled, “Non-Inclusion of Nigeria among the “2023 Countries of Particular Concern, Special Watch List Countries, Entities of Particular Concern” and addressed to the immediate-past Secretary of State Rt. Hon. Antony Blinken, we posited that the decision of the United States Government to exclude Nigeria from such list clearly defined the United States of America under President Joe Biden administration as an accomplice in such Genocide against Nigerian Christians. The protest letter is attached herewith as appendix one.
However, before proceeding further, we can not stop expressing our unqualified gratitude to President Donald Trump for the singular humane concern he has shown over time towards the plight of persecuted Christians in Nigeria and globally in general. A man of his words, President Trump has shown that he has both the moral capacity and undaunted political will to put the United States of America back on the track of her greatness as God’s Own Country. Indeed, much of President Trump’s Executive Orders appear to invoke 2 Chronicles Chapter 7, verse 14, which states inter alia:
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
It should be recalled that President Donald Trump had in 2018 in his Oval Office confronted the then visiting Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on this matter of persecution of Nigerian Christians in the following words:
“Also, we’ve had very serious problems with Christians who have been murdered, killed in Nigeria. We‘re going to be working on that problem very, very hard, because we can’t allow that to happen.”
President Trump was also humanely amazing for hosting in his Oval Office on July 6, 2017. Miss Joy Bukhara and Miss Lydia Pogu in the company of his enviable daughter Ivanka Joy Bishara and Lydia Pogu were among the fifty Christian students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State Nigeria, who were fortunate to escape from Boko Haram captivity out of the more than two hundred Christian students kidnapped by the Islamist insurgents.
Unfortunately, this unsurpassed visionary concern of President Trump for the plight of Nigerian Christians could not be fulfilled at the time because of the evil machinations of the American Philistines and Amalekites But today, we are delighted that God has answered our prayers and restored him to his rightful position as the 47th President of the United States of America. We have the unqualified reason therefore to celebrate the Goodness of Our God Almighty through the Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ that President Donald Trump has risen again in spite of the all the evil machinations of the enemy. For us, the election of President Trump was reminiscent of the Book of Acts of the Apostles Chapter 16 verses 25 and 26, which state:
“And at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them. Suddenly, there was a great earthquake, so the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bands were loosed.”
Like Paul and Silas praying and singing praises under the bondage of oppressive Roman Empire, Nigerian Christians continued to pray unceasingly with praises and worship to Almighty God for the victory of President Donald Trump. We prayed right from the point he declared his interest to re-contest his stolen mandate through all the persecutions that confronted him in the manner of the Saints departed to Election Day. And like the Walls of Biblical Jericho falling before the marching Israelites, we saw the doors of oppression against Christians in Nigeria and all over the world broken open with the consequent election of President Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States of America.
We wish to inform the Rt. Hon. Secretary of State that the same old order of oppression, persecution, kidnapping, maiming and mass killing of Nigerian Christians by the roguish Nigerian Muslim leadership through their armed Bandit, Armed Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram and ISWAP still exists with unimaginable impunity. Appendix One, which was our Protest letter to your predecessor Rt. Hon Antony Blinken will reveal more on this issue of persecution and slaughtering of Christians like animals by Muslim bandits, herdsmen, and insurgents under the protection of the federal government.
It will interest the Rt. Hon. Secretary of State that since the inception of these acts of Muslim terrorism in Nigeria which involved mass killings, kidnapping for ransom, and displacement of indigenous people from their ancestral homes, no single terrorist has been brought before the court of law for trial. And since there has been no trial, there has also not been any conviction for terrorism against all the terrorists captured by government troops.
It is ridiculous that while these Islamic terrorists continue to rake havoc against Christians, the same Government that claims to be fighting them tells us that they are at the same time rehabilitating the captured terrorists, most who eventual returned to their old base of terrorism. There is, therefore, no better way to describe this program of rehabilitation of murderers than an obnoxious government policy of collaboration with the same terrorists. Why should the same terrorists not be emboldened to continue their heinous crimes against the Nigeria Christian population with unbridled impunity if it has been made clear to them that capture means freedom from prosecution for their crimes?
Coupled with the unimaginable Islamic terrorism tormenting Nigerian Christians, the present Muslim President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has dramatically turned Nigerian Christians into inconsequential minorities in a country they are numerically in majority against Muslims through alienation in political appointments. Appendix two presents the list of the high points of this alienation of Christians by the current federal government under Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Here, Christians were allotted only 7 positions and Muslims 17 positions from President Bola Tinubu, a Muslim and Vice President Kashim Shettima, a Muslim to 22 Heads ff Nigerian Security Agencies.
Furthermore, Appendix Three, which is the list of the Ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, presents another stark evidence of gross discrimination against Christians, with only 15 Christians out of a total of 48 Ministers This same pattern is observed in other lower federal government agencies.
The Rt. Hon Secretary of State Sir, we wish to state that Nigeria is a Christian-majority nation supported both statistically and demographically in practical political terms. Unfortunately, this has over the years incredibly manipulated in favor of Muslims through the devious pro-Islamic policies of false population estimates without official population census and the unflinching support of the Islamic World through mandated false population estimation by Pew Research Center with the backing of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
We are therefore by the same token protesting against the United States of America State Department 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom with reference to Nigeria in which the percentage of Christian population was put at 48.1% and that of Muslims at 50%, based on the outdated 2015 Pew Research Center Report. We wish to emphasize that the stated population ratio between Christians and ☪️ Muslims has neither empirical nor accurate estimated basis.
The reasons are obvious.
First, apart from the 1951/53 National Census conducted by British Colonial administration, Nigeria, as an independent nation, has never conducted a credible national census up till this moment. The first national population census conducted by Nigeria as an independent nation was the 1962 Census, which was later canceled because of incidents of fraud. The 1963 Census, which followed shortly, was again embroiled in the same allegation of fraud leading to its rejection by Eastern and Midwestern Regions. It was, however, upheld by the Supreme Court.
The 1973 Census, which was the first to be conducted by a military government, showed that Christians were more in population in Nigeria than Muslims. It was for that reason that the Northern Muslim apex organization Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) protested against the census result and consequently compelled the Head of State General Yakubu Gowon to cancel the census result.
It was in order to perpetually cover up this fact of Christian majority that the 1991 Census conducted by the Federal Military Government of General Ibrahim Babangida excluded religious and ethnic identities, including State of origin from the enumeration forms. This exclusion was further carried forward in the 2006 National Census conducted under President Olusegun Obasanjo.
In August 2013 when the then Chairman of National Population Commission (NPC) Chief Festus Odimegwu played host to the Director General of International Organization on Migration (IOM), Ambassador William Lacy Swing, he emphatically affirmed the case of lack of accurate population figures for Nigeria. In his words:
“We do not really know our population; that is the truth of the matter because all the census ever conducted in this country ended in controversy. “We do our work, but politicians interfere, and at the end, you do not really know what population or census figures are.”
Chief Odimegwu even went further in August the same year to reconfirm the situation when he stated:
“No census has been credible in Nigeria since 1816. Even the one conducted in 2006 is not credible. I have the records and evidence produced by scholars and professors of repute; this is not my report. If the current laws are not amended, the planned 2016 census will not succeed.”
This later statement subsequently earned him his sack from the position. Alarmed, immediately after the statement, the Northern Muslim oligarchy who criminally clings to this spurious population census as the basis of their manipulation of both election results and delineation of national political constituencies sent the Governor of Kano State Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso to demand from President Goodluck Jonathan, Chief Festus Odimegwu’s sack. The politically malleable Jonathan eventually caved in to their request and fired Chief Odimegwu immediately.
There is therefore no official statistics of the population ratio between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria. Moreover, Nigeria is a nation where there are no official records of birth and death. So, the said 2015 Pew Research Center report on the population ratio between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria is not founded on verifiable evidence.
On the other hand, the demographic picture of the Nigerian nation evidently tilts in favor of the Christian majority against Muslims. Concerning this demographic picture, even the same United States 2023 State Department Report on International Religious Freedom states inter alia concerning Nigeria:
Islam is the dominant religion in the North West and North East Regions, although significant Christian populations reside there as well. Christians and Muslims reside in approximately equal numbers in the North Central Region. Christianity is the dominant religion in the South West, including Lagos, which is also home to significant Muslim populations. In the South East Region, Christian groups, including Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists, constitute the majority. In the South South, Christians form a substantial majority.
To break down the above demographic scenario to basic understanding, we will use the religious affiliations of elected State Governors and their Deputies as the point of our comparative reference. In the present political dispensation, Christians hold the positions of elected State Governors in twenty States out of the thirty-six States of the Federation, leaving Muslims with sixteen States. Similarly, Christians occupy twenty positions of Deputy Governors out of the thirty-six States of the Federation, with Muslims again holding sixteen slots.
Baring the presence of other minority religions, when we, therefore, algebraically calculate the above ratio, we arrive at Christians, constituting 55.6 percent of Nigeria’s approximate population, while Muslims constitute 44.4 percent. This is however without prejudice to the fact that Christians constitute between twenty and sixty percent of the population of such States as Kaduna, Niger, Kebbi, Bauchi, Yobe and Borno where Muslims continue to fraudulently produce both the Governors and Deputy Governors.
For example, Kaduna State is approximately made up of sixty percent of the Christian population. Even such States as Adamawa, Gombe, Nasarawa and Kogi are made up of Christian majority population but Muslim leaders continue to manipulate themselves into the Governorship positions through election rigging and partly because of the political naivety of their Christian population.
Given the foregoing evidence which established the incontrovertible fact that Christians make up the majority population of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, we humbly request a review of the official State Department classification of the Christian-Muslim population ratio as contained in the State Department 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom based on the outdated 2015 Pew Research Center Report. Against the 48.1% Christian population ratio and 50% Muslims population ratio presented by the above 2023 State Department Report, therefore, we request that the correct version should be in the following order: Christians 55.6%; Muslims 44.4%.
The Rt. Hon Secretary of State Sir, the outlandish height of Muslim impunity in rigging elections in Nigeria against Christians is not only limited to positioning their cronies in strategic judicial and executive positions that specifically deal with the rigging of elections, but included the brazen recruitment of grossly underage children between five and fifteen years to vote as adults in Presidential elections, as shown by appendix four which represents the case of Kano State.
This brazen impunity is further revealed by the jihadist tirades of the current Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Kashim Shettima in which he boasted that Islam must conquer Nigeria and that they must test the objective with the imposition of a Muslim President and a Muslim Vice President on Nigerian Christians. This is contained in the attached video clip of his speech as appendix five.
We are therefore pleading with the Rt. Hon Secretary of State and our divine-inspired President Donald Trump to take a strong stance against the persecution of Nigerian Christians by the current administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his Fulani Muslim jihadist allies. Indeed it will not be out place if we request the President to appoint a Special Envoy on the persecution of Nigerian Christians, given the strategic importance of Nigeria to American Africa policy and the fight against terrorism in Africa.
We make this special request bearing in mind that a Muslim President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will never work in accord with the international policy objectives of the United States of America. As the most populous African country, a pro-America Nigeria can only be properly and objectively defined by a Christian President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Respectfully Yours,
Dr. Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe, PhD, DD
President