A United States senator, Ted Cruz has claimed that some Nigerian officials are involved in enabling “the mass murder” of Christians in the country.
He made the allegation on Tuesday during a senate foreign relations subcommittee hearing titled ‘The US approach to counterterrorism in Africa’.
According to Cruz, “more Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world”.
“Since 2009, Islamic jihadists have murdered more than 50,000 Christians in Nigeria and more than 20,000 churches, schools, and religious institutions have been destroyed, most burned to the ground,” he said.
“Nigerian officials had been, unfortunately, complicit in facilitating these atrocities.”
He linked the violence partly to the implementation of Sharia law in some northern states and criticised the Nigerian government’s response as slow and ineffective.
Cruz added that the US has identified officials allegedly involved and would ensure accountability.
“Last year, I met with a delegation of top Nigerian defence and security officials. They said they were committed to ending the violence,” he said.
“I told them I would judge their commitment by the results.
“Those results have yet to materialise.”
The senator also referenced a proposed legislation aimed at holding Nigerian officials accountable for “facilitating the mass murder of Christians”.
Responding, Nick Checker, a US state department official, said Nigeria has shown some level of cooperation with the United States on security efforts.
“We’ve seen some positive movements to include leadership changes in Nigerian security services, security deployments, including the recruitment of 50,000 additional troops and the deployment of forest guards to the middle belt area where we’ve seen a lot of this anti-Christian violence as well as increased prosecution for folks accused of terrorism as well,” Checker said.
“So the United States does welcome Nigeria’s initial response.”
He noted that collaboration between both countries continues, although more progress is expected in addressing the security situation.