Baroness Cox hosted a meeting in the House of Lords on 13 March to highlight the serious problems that Christians in Northern Nigeria are facing at the hands of militant Muslims. Journalist Douglas Murray describes it as ‘ethnic and religious cleansing’ which appears to be taking place with the Nigerian government’s complicity.
Mark Lipdo of the Nigerian organisation Stefanos Foundation has been keeping records of the multiple atrocities that he hears about. The local Muslim Fulani terrorist group is rated as the fourth most deadly terrorist group in the world. Some 4,000 people have been killed since 2014 by this group. They frequently destroy crops and take over villages, with brutal attacks at night. The government knows about this, but is not challenging it. Even when they have video evidence taken by the perpetrators, but left behind on a dropped phone, nothing is done. They say that the security network is dominated by Fulani Muslims.
Douglas Murray argued that the West wants to avoid drawing the obvious conclusions. They look for complexity in order to avoid taking any action. In fact, Britain could make a significant difference by applying diplomatic pressure. Even this has not been done. We desperately need to move on from acquiescent ignorance. Douglas Murray wrote a prominent feature about this in a recent issue of the Spectatorin order to raise the profile of the issue.
