A United States lawmaker has questioned Nigeria’s official position on Christian killings after Foreign Affairs Minister Yusuf Tuggar claimed that only 177 Christians were killed nationwide over the last five years.
Tuggar had made the assertion during an appearance on Piers Morgan’s show earlier this week, where he dismissed genocide allegations and argued that Nigeria does not record deaths by religious affiliation.
He insisted that the figures often cited by international organisations were exaggerated and lacked context.
The minister was responding to statistics presented on the show, which claimed that more than 50,000 Christians had been killed since 2009 and thousands of churches destroyed across Nigeria.
Tuggar rejected those figures and stressed that the government sees all victims of violence as Nigerians rather than religious groups.
However, while speaking during a congressional hearing in Washington DC on Thursday, US Representative Riley Moore described the Nigerian minister’s claim as inconsistent with available reports and difficult to believe.
Moore said American lawmakers had engaged with the Nigerian delegation currently in Washington and found significant disparities in the figures presented.
According to him, attempting to downplay the scale of the crisis could undermine Nigeria’s credibility.
“I saw the foreign minister’s interview on Piers Morgan, and we heard the same thing when they visited us. The claim that only 177 Christians have been killed in five years does not align with any of the reports we’ve seen,” Moore said.
He added that the number mentioned by Tuggar could easily represent casualties from only a few months in some affected communities, emphasising the need for openness and accurate reporting.
Moore also noted that Nigeria has a major opportunity to strengthen its partnership with the United States but stressed that such cooperation must be built on transparency and honest engagement.
The debate over religiously targeted attacks remains a sensitive issue in Nigeria, where persistent conflicts involving bandits, extremist groups, and communal militias have left thousands dead in recent years. The U.S. Congress has continued to express concern over the scale of violence and the accuracy of government reports.
