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2023-07-26 Africa Subsaharan
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Local Priest: Nigeria Trying to Blame Its Christian Genocide on Climate Crisis
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[Breitbart] Foreign Fulani jihadists wielding guns and machetes are exterminating the indigenous Christians of central Nigeria in what world observers erroneously describe as a “climate change” conflict, Father Remigius Ihyula told Breitbart News last week from his home state of Benue.
Father Ihyula, who serves as a university chaplain and emergency relief coordinator under the archdiocese of the capital of Benue state, Makurdi, accused the Muslim-led federal government of Nigeria of covering up a ceaseless, decade-long slaughter of his people by ethnic Fulani groups. The groups often appear in media identified only by the secular description of nomadic “herdsmen,” or as unspecified “gunmen” or “bandits.”
“In fact, people were even warned not to say they are Fulani herdsmen who have been causing these atrocities such that when you open the general media they are talking about bandits – bandits or they say ‘unknown gunmen’ or things like that,” Father Ihyula noted, “so you read about bandits. It’s rubbish: they are Fulani men going about with cattle and with guns and killing people and the government won’t do anything about it.”
The “gunmen” target Christian villages throughout the region known as the “Middle Belt,” the span across central Nigeria where Benue state is located. Village attacks often involve the jihadists burning down homes, killing the men, and abducting and raping the women. Those who manage to escape are often semi-permanently displaced, forced into internally displaced persons (IDP) camps where some have languished for over a decade in conditions Father Ihyula described as “worse than animals.”
Benue officials estimate that as many as 2 million people were internally displaced in Nigeria as of 2022.
Nigerian leaders, most prominently ethnic Fulani former President Muhammadu Buhari, acknowledged the killings but claimed much of the situation was a conflict between the herdsmen and the indigenous Christians, often claiming that “climate change” was to blame for the bloodshed. Climate alarmism has been lucrative for the Nigerian government; American climate czar John Kerry pledged during a trip to Nigeria last year that Abuja would have access to a $12 billion “climate action” fund. Father Ihyula energetically rejected claims of a relationship between the climate and the jihad, noting the alleged climate crisis is global and “people in the U.S. are not killing people because there is climate change.”
Jihadist sieges of Nigerian Christian communities became a topic of concern in Washington this month as the House Foreign Affairs Committee hosted a hearing on global religious persecution. The hearing was prompted by meetings Father Ihyula and Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi held with lawmakers through cooperation with Aid to the Church in Need, a pontifical charity organization.
The hearing occurred nearly two years after Nigeria was removed from the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) for religious persecution, a move by the administration of President Joe Biden that “baffled” and outraged persecuted Christians given the lack of any meaningful improvement in their security in the country when Nigeria lost its place on the list. At last week’s hearing, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) condemned the Biden administration for giving Nigeria “a pass” while “violations of religious freedom are escalating.”
“There is an orchestrated design to push especially Christian populations away from these places so that they can occupy those territories,” he explained, describing Benue state as nearly 99 percent Christian and thus a topic of particular ire for the jihadists.
Father Ihyula reported that currently, in July, the Christians are benefiting from a mild respite in violent attacks as a result of the rainy season.
“During the rainy season generally, especially around in Middle Belt down the south, the attacks usually slow down … because they cannot move as they want,” he detailed. “It’s a pattern that we know of for some time. They tend to slow down during the rainy season and then it peaks when the grass begins to get dryer … because then they can move easily and, you know, their trucks and their bikes – sometimes they come on bikes, they can drive around.”
A little-reported fact about the attacks, the Father explained, is that the Fulani herdsmen are often not Nigerian, while the victims are members of indigenous minority tribes that do not find significant representation in a government in which Fulanis, Yorubas, and Igbos are considered the three main ethnic communities of the country.
“[The Fulani jihadists] come from Guinea, some of them are found in Guinea, some of them are found in Mali, some are found in Burkina Faso, some are found in … Chad,” he explained. “The north of Nigeria is bordering Chad and Niger and Cameroon and … those borders are open so they just walk in.”
“Most of the victims are minorities,” Father Ihyula continued. “Nigeria is still mainly a country of tribes and tongues so, for instance, if you come to Nigeria, they will say they are three major tribes: there are Hausa Fulani, there is the Igbos, and there is the Yorubas, and then after that they begin to count minority tribes.”
Nigeria’s population is a little over half Muslim, while Christians of all sects account for about 46 percent of the population. Despite this, Father Ihyula noted, the government has increasingly allowed elements of Sharia, the Islamic law, to enter the country’s constitution, disenfranchising the sizable population who are not Muslim.
Father Ihyula expressed urgent concern that the government has done little to protect Christian populations from the jihadist threat they face because the past two presidents – Buhari and current President Bola Tinubu – are Muslims of the same political party and obscure the reality of places like Benue on international platforms.
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Posted by Skidmark 2023-07-26 01:25||
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File under: Fulani Herdsmen (Boko Haram)
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Posted by Skidmark 2023-07-26 09:08||
2023-07-26 09:08||
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