Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari came to Washington on Dec. 15 expecting to be applauded for his eight years steering Africa’s largest and most volatile nation, but the skunk at the garden party was waiting for him.
In 2021, Nigeria accounted for more than 80 percent of all the Christians killed worldwide, according to a Save the Persecuted Christians press release.
And since the former major general gained power in 2015 with the promise to defeat the jihadist insurgency known as Boko Haram (meaning “Western learning forbidden”) 200 million citizens had hoped he would do that.
Yet after seven years, the jihadist insurgents are still battling his army near Lake Chad, and thousands of radicalized bandits in Nigeria’s Middle Belt killed more than 6,000 unarmed civilians in 2021.
The Reuters allegations cite the testimonies of 58 anonymous witnesses, including 15 soldiers and one named person. Corroboration from other news organizations has yet to surface.
But Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking leader on U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for investigations.
“The credible reports by Reuters implicating Nigerian officials in systematic forced abortions performed on women and girls who were kidnapped and raped by Islamic militants shock the conscience,” Smith wrote in a statement.
Smith further cited legislation he had sponsored to sanction any foreign national “involved or complicit in this atrocity.”
“Deeply troubled,” wrote a Department of State spokesman adding: “Our Embassy in Abuja is seeking additional information, including speaking to Nigeria authorities.”
Advocates for Persecuted Christians in Africa have demanded for more than a year that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken restore the term “Country of Particular Concern” to Nigeria, which had been assigned by State Department under the last year of the Trump administration.
Blinken has yet to explain the removal action, but according to former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Destro, the label was fiercely resisted by the Buhari administration officials.
“I recall a meeting our State Department team had with Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and other foreign ministry officials in 2020, and the atmosphere was extremely awkward. At the end of it the Nigerian team walked out without taking the usual group picture,” Destro told The Epoch Times.
“It is because of all the evidence stacked against the brutal Buhari regime, that these Reuters reports carry weight,” said Dede Laugesen, executive director of Save the Persecuted Christians.
“Reuters has reported similar in 2015 and an investigation was launched, but ‘credible’ evidence was not found to support that report,” Laugesen told The Epoch Times. “But, we must ask, who is investigating the investigators—is it the accused and their enablers?
“Rather, Reuters has shown they have been following these issues for years. These terrorists and their masters care not about ending human life—be it young, old, or still in the womb. If I were a betting person, my money is on the Reuters investigation,” Laugesen said.
A group of Christian critics plans to stand in protest of Buhari’s meeting with U.S. officials outside the U.S. Institute of Peace, 2301 Constitution Ave in Washington at 2 p.m. on Nov. 16. The protest has been organized by Faith McDonnell, director of Advocacy of Katartismos Global.
However, claims of military mass abortions are not credible, Nigerian expatriate and government critic Emmanuel Ogebe told the Epoch Times. Ogebe is an international human rights lawyer with the U.S. Nigeria Law Group.
“Authoritative contacts I interviewed say military mass abortions are not credible because, as one high-ranking Army officer told me, ‘we don’t have the facilities and medical personnel.’
“These pregnant women need to be admitted and intravenous drugs administered. Those under three months will have to undergo dilatation and curettage, which is a serious surgical procedure carried out in the theater of a hospital, and few such hospitals are available in the Boko Haram-occupied areas,” Ogebe said.
“There is evidence that the children of women escaping Boko Haram camps are rescued,” Ogebe went on to say.
“The real story here is that after a dozen years of our advocacy with the international criminal court [ICC] the ICC has continued woefully to fail to act on ongoing atrocities by both sides [Boko Haram and the Nigerian military].
