Only 177 Christians have been killed in 5 years -Nigeria’s foreign affairs minister tackles ex-Canadian lawmaker | WATCH VIDEO
Only 177 Christians have been killed in 5 years –Nigeria’s foreign affairs minister tackles ex-Canadian lawmaker | WATCH VIDEO
Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Yusuf Tuggar, has publicly opined that only 177 Christians have been kill-ed and 102 churches destroyed in the past 5 years.
While featuring Tuggar on his programme “uncensored” on YouTube, Piers Morgan quoted the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), statistics of 50,000 Christians killed in Nigeria since 2009 and 18,000 churches destroyed.
The minister, however, described the figures as misleading, arguing that the government does not categorise fatalities by religious identity and that all victims are treated as Nigerians.
The interview took another dimension when Morgan invited a former Canadian lawmaker, Goldie Ghamari.
Speaking, Ghamari alleged that Nigeria’s security crisis amounts to jihad, and linked it with the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel.
The former Canadian politician also referenced the Muslim identities of President Bola Tinubu and Vice-President Kashim Shettima as “evidence” of an enabling Islamist government.
“By the way, this is a government that is working closely behind the scenes with the Islamic Republic of Iran. You should ask the foreign minister why Nigerian schoolchildren are holding pictures of the Ayatollah, who is a brutal dictator and is murdering my people in Iran,” she alleged.
Ghamari further insisted that people need to look into the linkages between the current Nigerian government and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“I was a politician for seven years, Piers, and I can tell when someone is lying and avoiding the truth. That’s exactly what this foreign minister is doing, and shame on him for lying,” she added.
Meanwhile, Tuggar fired back, calling her remarks uninformed and dismissing her assertions as hollow rhetoric. He accused the ex-MP of trivialising the lives of Nigerians from afar.
Responding to her claims about Tinubu and Shettima’s religion, the minister noted that Nigerians prioritise geopolitical balance over faith, pointing out that the president is from the south while the vice-president is from the north.
When Morgan asked if he condemned attacks on Christians by Islamist extremists, Tuggar said he did — and shared a personal tragedy:
“I lost my father-in-law to an attack by an Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram, so I myself am a victim. I’ve lost family members to attacks, and they were Muslims.
“But it doesn’t matter whether they’re Muslim or Christian… The number one enemy of Boko Haram is not a Christian. It is a Muslim who does not subscribe to their own brand of Islam,” he said.
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