US Commission Blacklists Nigeria on Religious Freedom

A United States congressionally mandated commission yesterday blacklisted Nigeria as one of the world's worst abusers of religious freedom, in a controversial decision made with dissent from at least one of the panel's members.
“The tolerance by Nigeria's federal, state and local governments of systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom has created a climate of impunity, resulting in thousands of deaths,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF) said in its annual report published yesterday.
“In late November 2008, hundreds of people were killed and at least 10,000 displaced when ethnic and sectarian violence erupted in the city of Jos, where the number of deaths reached the greatest level in over four years,” the report said.
CIRF stated that the Nigerian government has continued to respond in an inadequate and ineffectual manner to persistent religious freedom violations and violent sectarian and communal conflicts along religious lines.
“Other concerns include an ongoing series of violent communal and sectarian conflicts along religious lines, the expansion of Sharia (Islamic law) into the criminal codes of several Northern Nigerian states, and discrimination against minority communities of Christians and Muslims,” the report stated.
The commission sent its recommendations to the State Department, which publishes the official US list of religious freedom abusers and could ask Congress to impose sanctions. However, it is not an automatic process.
As at press time, State Department officials declined to comment on the prospects of Nigeria's blacklisting.
Although CIRF accepted these official policies do not encourage or promote abuse of religious freedom in Nigeria, the commission faulted the Nigerian authorities for failing to prevent violence along religious lines.
However, because the violence was not caused by the government, one of the commissioners, Michael Cromartie disagreed with Nigeria's designation as a “country of particular concern.”
The list includes twelve other countries, including Burma, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Instead, Cromartie wants Nigeria kept on the commission's “watch list” of eleven countries, where it had been on for the past few years.
At least one other commissioner has since changed his mind, but it was too late to affect the designation, officials familiar with the deliberation and voting process said.
They also said most of the panel's members found the blacklisting unjustified, including staffers who visited Nigeria a month ago.
They argued that the problem with the government has less to do with religion than with deeply rooted corruption and inefficiency.
The panel has nine members, but one seat is currently vacant. In order for a country to be included either in the watch list or in the worst offenders list, at least five of the commissioners must vote to do so, which was the result in Nigeria's case.
Agency reports said the Nigerian Embassy in Washington did not return phone calls seeking comment on the development yesterday.