Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the need to designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, the need to appoint a Special Envoy for Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, and for other purposes.

IV 118TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION H. RES. 82 Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the need to designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in and tolerating system- atic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, the need to appoint a Special Envoy for Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, and for other purposes. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES JANUARY 31, 2023 Mr. SMITH of New Jersey (for himself, Mr. CUELLAR, and Mr. HILL) sub- mitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs RESOLUTION Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the need to designate Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egre- gious violations of religious freedom, the need to appoint a Special Envoy for Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, and for other purposes. Whereas in 2020, the Department of State designated Nige- ria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) pursuant to the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6401 et seq.), finding that it is ‘‘engaging in or tolerating’’ ‘‘systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom’’; VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:08 Feb 01, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR82.IH HR82 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 2 •HRES 82 IH Whereas, in 2021 and 2022, the Department of State omit- ted Nigeria from its CPC list; Whereas, in 2022, the U.S. Commission on International Re- ligious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that the De- partment of State redesignate Nigeria as a CPC and found the Department of State’s decision to delist Nige- ria ‘‘inexplicable’’, and a result of ‘‘turning a blind eye’’ to that country’s ‘‘particularly severe religious freedom violations’’; Whereas USCIRF finds that ‘‘in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, nonstate armed groups also conducted attacks on houses of worship, religious ceremonies, and religious leaders, with Christian communities and their churches hit par- ticularly hard’’ and that ‘‘the Nigerian Government has often failed to respond sufficiently to violence against re- ligious leaders and congregations’’; Whereas, in January 2023, Open Doors reported in Nigeria there were ‘‘5,014 Christians killed in 2022, nearly 90 percent of the total number of Christians killed worldwide . . . [and] almost 90 percent of kidnappings carried out against Christians in 2022’’; Whereas according to some experts, the northern-based Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, a Fulani herdsmen advocacy group, supports reestablishing a Fulani empire, modeled upon the caliphate in northern Nigeria established by Usman dan Fodio, in the early 19th century; Whereas Nigeria is an ethnically and religiously diverse Fed- eral State, and traditionally political power has been bal- anced between Muslims and Christians, Northerners and VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:08 Feb 01, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR82.IH HR82 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 3 •HRES 82 IH Southerners, and among Nigeria’s 371 different ethnic groups; Whereas President Muhammadu Buhari has favored and pro- moted fellow Fulani and other northern Muslim ethnic groups, while many of Nigeria’s diverse ethnic and reli- gious groups, including Igbo and Yoruba as well as Christians and Shia Muslims, report they are denied equal rights; Whereas, on July 13, 2021, in testimony at a congressional hearing before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commis- sion by Bishop Matthew Kukah of Sokoto, representing the Catholic Church in Nigeria, stated that the ‘‘Muslim elite’’ ‘‘us[es] religion as a tool for political mobilisation’’, and further stated that President Buhari shows a clear preference for appointing ‘‘men and women of his faith’’; Whereas departures from past conventions aimed at achieving ethnic, religious, and geographic balance include the forced replacement of then-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Walter Onnoghen with a Muslim jurist, and the se- lection of Muslims as leaders of both houses of the na- tional legislature; Whereas President Buhari’s party, the All Progressives Con- gress, in a departure from customary practice, nominated two Muslims to its 2023 Presidential ticket, selecting as vice presidential candidate Kashim Shettima, whose past tenure as governor of Borno State was criticized for fail- ing to adequately address jihadi violence perpetrated by Boko Haram; Whereas the Aid to the Church in Need reports that, since early 2022 alone, 20 Nigerian Catholic priests have been VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:08 Feb 01, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR82.IH HR82 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 4 •HRES 82 IH kidnapped, 5 of whom were murdered, with many of these attacks occurring on church grounds; Whereas, on January 11, 2023, Bishop Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, president of the Nigerian Catholic Bishops’ Con- ference, and four other bishops on the conference’s ad- ministrative board met with President Buhari to appeal for civil protections in Nigeria, stating, ‘‘[o]ur Church personnel have been frequent victims in terms of kidnap- ping or outright murder’’; Whereas the Methodist Church reported on May 29, 2022, that eight Fulani militants abducted and tortured its head, Prelate Samuel Kanu-Uche, a chaplain, and Bishop Dennis Mark of Owerri, who were released after paying a $240,000 ransom, while the militants warned, ‘‘We will finish you people and take over this land’’, according to Bishop Kanu, who added, ‘‘They claimed that Nigeria be- longed to Fulani’’; Whereas imams were also abducted in 2022, according to Ni- gerian media reports, with the chief imam of Masama- Mudi village, Zamfara, being abducted from his mosque on December 29, 2022, by unknown assailants, and an imam being abducted in Zugu, Zamfara State, in a mosque attack on September 2, 2022, reportedly by ‘‘ter- rorists’’; Whereas in northern and central Nigeria, near-weekly, violent assaults on churches and their congregations are report- edly carried out by designated terror groups, Fulani mili- tants and other nonstate actors, who act with impunity; Whereas northern Nigeria has seen the destruction of ‘‘over 17,000 churches since 2009’’ in attacks by Boko Haram militants, Fulani herdsmen, and others, according to a VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:08 Feb 01, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR82.IH HR82 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 5 •HRES 82 IH 2020 Vatican report of its interview of a Nigerian Catho- lic civil rights expert, and in 2021, the Department of State reported five attacks on mosques by unidentified gunmen, bandits, and Boko Haram; Whereas, for over a decade, Islamic terror organizations have carried out mass murder, rape, kidnappings, and other atrocities on Nigerians of various ethnic and religious backgrounds, causing unspeakable suffering and displace- ment, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that this has resulted in over 3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in north- eastern Nigeria, and 343,000 registered refugee Nige- rians in the Lake Chad region; Whereas terrorist group Boko Haram, whose name means ‘‘Western education is forbidden’’, kidnapped over 200 mostly Christian schoolgirls in 2014 in Chibok, Borno State; 100 remain captive and are sexually abused and pressured to convert to Islam, and Leah Sharibu, a Christian, remains captive and enslaved following a ter- rorist raid of her school, in Dapchi, Yobe State, in 2018; Whereas the British All Party Parliament Group (APPG) re- port of 2020 finds that some Fulani herders ‘‘dem- onstrated a clear intent to target Christians and symbols of Christian identity such as churches’’, and, during at- tacks, shouted ‘‘Allah u Akbar’’, ‘‘destroy the infidels’’, and ‘‘wipe out the infidels’’, and on January 15, 2023, assailants reportedly attacked New Life for All Church in Katsina, shooting and wounding the pastor and kidnap- ping up to 25 in the congregation, including 5 women and girls; Whereas, on June 5, 2022, for the first time in southern Ni- geria, a church was attacked during a Pentecost Sunday VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:08 Feb 01, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR82.IH HR82 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 6 •HRES 82 IH Mass, when terrorists massacred 40 worshippers and wounded scores more in a shooting attack on St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo City, in Ondo State, and none of the suspects have been convicted and sentenced; Whereas the Department of State mischaracterizes or incom- pletely characterizes the increasing incidents of large scale violence in Nigeria’s northern and central rural re- gions as ‘‘communal clashes’’ between Muslim herders and Christian farmers, solely attributable to competition for scarce natural resources resulting from climate change; Whereas USCIRF reports that ‘‘Fulani-affiliated armed groups used religious rhetoric while conducting myriad attacks on predominantly Christian villages in Kaduna State’’, and that ‘‘[k]idnappers also reportedly delib- erately targeted Christians for abduction and execution’’; Whereas USCIRF concludes that the Nigerian Government has ‘‘routinely failed to investigate these attacks [on Christian communities] and prosecute those responsible, demonstrating a problematic level of apathy on the part of state officials’’; Whereas the UNHCR reports that there are over 2.1 million IDPs in northeastern Nigeria, and 304,562 registered refugee Nigerians in the Lake Chad region; Whereas USCIRF cites Nigeria’s Islamic blasphemy laws among the reasons it lists Nigeria as worthy of CPC des- ignation, given that Nigeria is one of only 7 countries with criminal blasphemy laws that carry the death pen- alty, with such laws existing in the 12 majority-Muslim northern Nigerian States; VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:08 Feb 01, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR82.IH HR82 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 7 •HRES 82 IH Whereas, in 2020, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a Sufi musician, was convicted of blasphemy after sharing lyrics on WhatsApp and sentenced to death without legal represen- tation in Kano; Muslim clerics, Abdul and Sheikh Abduljabbar Nasiru-Kabara, are now on death row for blasphemy in Kano; and Nigeria’s Humanist Association and former Muslim Mubarak Bala received a 24-year sentence for apostasy in 2022; and Whereas, on May 12, 2022, Deborah Yakubu, a Christian student, was beaten to death by a mob on her school’s campus in Sokoto for alleged blasphemy against Islam on WhatsApp, only two suspects were arrested on minor charges, and for criticizing Yakubu’s murder, the Sultan of Sokoto and Sokoto’s Catholic Bishop Matthew Kukah faced serious death threats from others who acted with impunity: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That— 1 (1) the Secretary of State should immediately 2 designate Nigeria a ‘‘country of particular concern’’ 3 for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, 4 and egregious violations of religious freedom, as 5 mandated by the International Religious Freedom 6 Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6401 et seq.); and 7 (2) in order to ensure that the Secretary of 8 State receives more complete and accurate reporting 9 and analysis, the President should promptly appoint 10 a person of recognized distinction in the fields of re- 11 ligious freedom and human rights as ‘‘Special Envoy 12 for Nigeria and the Lake Chad Region’’ with the 13 VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:08 Feb 01, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\HR82.IH HR82 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 8 •HRES 82 IH rank of Ambassador, who reports directly to the Sec- 1 retary of State and coordinates United States Gov- 2 ernment efforts to monitor and combat atrocities 3 there. 4 Æ VerDate Sep 11 2014 02:08 Feb 01, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6301 E:\BILLS\HR82.IH HR82 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS