… Plan the commitment to the United States Congress
The Senate is ready to address the growing statements of a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria, which have circulated both locally and internationally by some media, defense groups and religious organizations.
Legislators say that the narrative misrepresent the complex security challenges of the country as purely religious.
On Tuesday a motion entitled “Urgent need to correct the wrong concepts with respect to the alleged narrative of” Christian genocide “in Nigeria and international communities” will be discussed.
The motion, sponsored by the former leader of the Senate Ali Ndume, has Saint Muse Senators (Niger East), Magatakarda Wamako (Sokoto Northo) and Ibrahim Bomai (Yobe South) as copatrochinters.
According to a copy of the motion seen by Tribune onlineSenators said the goal is to correct what they described as a distorted narrative in some reports of international media that portray Christians as the only victims of Nigeria’s violence.
They pointed out that “the serious security challenges that include terrorism, insurgency, bandit, communal conflicts and specific attacks that have affected citizens in various religious, ethnic and regional origins, resulting in the loss of lives and property between Christian and Muslim communities,” they are erroneously present in religious terms, a development that the country warned even more.
The measure follows the recent response of the presidency to the senator of the United States, Ted Cruz, who claimed that Nigerian officials were ignoring or supporting massive murders of Christians by Islamist militants.
Cruz, in a publication about its X management, said that Christians in Nigeria faced a systematic persecution.
Responding, Bayo Onanuga, special advisor to the president about information and strategy, dismissed the statements as false and misleading. He said that Nigeria’s security problems are caused by terrorism, banditing and crime, not religious persecution, which accumulates that the country enjoys religious harmony.
NDUME and his Copatrocinadores expressed concern that the Senate and the United States Congress could have been influenced by such statements and could move to label Nigeria as a “country of particular concern”, a designation typically reserved for nations accused of human rights or violations of religious freedom.
They urged the Senate to reject the characterization of Nigeria’s security crisis as a “Christian genocide” and to reaffirm that ongoing conflicts come from socio -economic, ethnic and criminal factors that cross religious lines.
Legislators also asked the Federal Government to “encourage diplomatic missions, especially the United States embassy, ​​international organizations and foreign media to trust verified, balanced and credible sources, including security agencies, local communities and independent observers, informing about religiously sensitive issues in Nigeria.”
In addition, they advised the Government, through the leadership of the tenth National Assembly, which “involves the Senate and the United States Congress; international partners and diaspora networks through official information and publications based on facts to correct wrong concepts.”
They also proposed that Nigeria “supports interreligious programs for the consolidation of peace that emphasizes the shared victim and national unity” and “guarantee the justice and responsibility of all victims of violent attacks, whether Christian, Muslims or other Muslims, to address impunity and rebuild public confidence in state institutions.”
Read too Main stories OF Nigerian tribe
Watch the best Nigerian Tribune TV videos