Nigeria: Worst In Africa

[Valin]

Strategy Page

January 8, 2020:

Christian religious leaders are putting more pressure on the government to do something to reduce the violence against Christians in central and northern Nigeria. Over a thousand Christians were killed in 2019 because of this. It was not just Boko Haram and ISWAP, but also Moslem tribes that have been attacking Christians in northern and Central Nigeria in a pattern that has existed for centuries but has gotten worse in the last decade. Moslem politicians and government officials play down the violence and are now accused of making the situations worse by not taking any action against the Islamic killers.

About half of all Nigerians are Christian but most of them live in the south, where the oil and most of the developed economy is. Christians are better educated and more successful economically which strikes many Moslem Nigerians as not right. After all Christians are infidels and enemies of Islam. Boko Haram is more direct and believes that all Christians must convert to Islam. Those who resist must be killed or enslaved. Most Nigerian Moslems disagree with these Boko Haram attitudes towards Christians, Boko Haram considers Moslems who disagree with them over Christians to be enemies of Islam and subject to death unless they change their attitude.

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While Islamic terrorists remains a major issue in Nigeria, such is not the case in the rest of the world. Islamic terrorism no longer dominates the world news now that ISIL has been largely suppressed. Global Islamic terrorism related deaths have fallen by over 50 percent since 2014, when there were 35,000. Global deaths hit 19,000 in 2017 and under 16,000 for 2018. These deaths are still declining. This activity is most visible in the GTI (Global Terrorism Index), which counts all forms of terrorism. That puts Nigeria in the top ten because its casualties from Boko Haram violence alone would not do it. In the last year or so most terror related deaths in Nigeria have come from tribal warfare.

Currently the worldwide top ten consists of Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, India, Yemen, Philippines, and Congo. India, Philippines, Yemen and Congo all have Islamic terrorism accounting for a minority of the deaths. Nigeria would as well except that many of its non-Islamic terrorist deaths are from Moslems attacking fellow Moslems for purely economic reasons. Despite that in 2018 worldwide terrorism deaths declined 15 percent to 15,952. This decline is, so far, a four year trend and even Syria is one of the areas where there have been fewer deaths in the last few years. Egypt saw an even more dramatic 90 percent decline. This decline has continued for 2019 but the headline news does not cover trends like that. The old news adage, “if it bleeds it leads” is as true as ever and in Nigeria there are bloody headlines daily because of Islamic terrorist or tribal violence.

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Global Terrorism Index (GTI)