Gatestone Institute | Raymond Ibrahim | Oct. 7, 2019
Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria—who reached that position in part thanks to Barack H. Obama—continues to fuel the “genocide” of Christians in his nation, according to Nigerian Christian leaders.
Most recently, Father Valentine Obinna, a priest of the Aba diocese of Nigeria, attributed the ongoing slaughter of Christians to the planned “Islamization of Nigeria”:
People read the handwriting on the wall. It’s obvious. It’s underground. It’s trying to make the whole country a Muslim country. But they are trying to do that in a context with a strong presence of Christians, and that’s why it becomes very difficult for him [Buhari].
Nigeria is roughly half Muslim, half Christian. A 2011 ABC News report offers context on when and why Muslim anger reached a boiling point:
The current wave of [Muslim] riots was triggered by the Independent National Election Commission’s (INEC) announcement on Monday [April 18, 2011] that the incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan [a Christian], won in the initial round of ballot counts. That there were riots in the largely Muslim inhabited northern states where the defeat of the Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari was intolerable, was unsurprising. Northerners [Muslims] felt they were entitled to the presidency for the declared winner, President Jonathan, [who] assumed leadership after the Muslim president, Umaru Yar’Adua died in office last year and radical groups in the north [Boko Haram] had seen his [Jonathan’s] ascent as a temporary matter to be corrected at this year’s election. Now they are angry despite experts and observers concurring that this is the fairest and most independent election in recent Nigerian history.
Between 2011 and 2015, Boko Haram—an Islamic jihadi group that committed ISIS type atrocities before ISIS came into being—terrorized and slaughtered thousands of Christians, particularly those living in the Muslim majority north. In 2015, Nigeria’s Muslims finally got what they want: a Muslim president in the person of Muhammadu Buhari. However, the violence only got worse, as the Muslim Fulani herdsmen—the ethnic tribe from which Buhari hails—joined and even surpassed Boko Haram in their slaughter of Christians.