The main opposition party in Nigeria, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) demanded on Sunday that President Bola Tinubu consider resignation if he cannot ensure the safety of Christians in the face on a decade-long jihadist genocide campaign against them.
Nigeria consistently ranks as the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, where more Christians are killed for their faith annually than any other country combined. This is in part due to the country’s large Christian population; about 40 percent of Nigerians identify as Christians, compared to nearly 60 percent who are Muslim. In the Middle Belt region, where the Muslim-majority north meets the Christian-majority south, “bandit” gangs of jihadist Fulani terrorists regularly invade indigenous Christian communities, massacring locals, abducting women and children, and stealing their land.
The Nigerian government, first under former President Muhammadu Buhari and currently under his protege Bola Tinubu, denies that any such genocide is taking place in Nigeria. Buhari himself has denied any anti-Christian discrimination in the country, calling the violence generic “insecurity.” Nigerian officials with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have repeatedly blamed “climate change” for the jihadist slaughter.
The two main jihadist threats in Nigeria are the Islamist State-linked terrorist organization Boko Haram in the northeast of the country and the Fulani jihadists of the Middle Belt. The persecution has become a topic of international alarm in the past month after President Donald Trump added Nigeria to the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) for religious freedom, warning that Christians face “an existential threat” in Nigeria.
“The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!” he announced on October 31.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, the national publicity secretary of the opposition PDP, Comrade Ini Ememobong, condemned Tinubu for the global infamy the country is currently experiencing. He decried the government’s incompetence in containing the threat of jihadist “bandits” and refusal to admit the dire state of affairs for Christians.
“If they feel they are overwhelmed, let them tell us,” Ememobong said, referring to APC government officials. “Normally, we have the international partners who can help. But if you do not invite them, you can become a local meddlesome interloper if you seek to help.”
“At any time, government is unwilling, unable, or incapable of executing this primary role, such a government must either ask for help (locally or internationally) or honourably resign, if it is sincere and responsible,” he demanded, according to the Nigerian newspaper Vanguard.
The PDP official expressed particular outrage at the government’s policy of shutting down schools in response to jihadist attacks. Entire states have shut down all schools this week following a string of massacres and mass abductions by jihadists targeting Christians schoolchildren.
“We warn that this closure, if undertaken, like many of this administration’s quick-fix approaches to serious governance issues, will amount to a complete surrender to terrorists,” Ememobong warned, “whose sole aim is to shut down schools and prevent children from obtaining formal education.”
In Boko Haram’s case, its name literally translates to “Western education is forbidden” and it has focused largely on attacking schools. Its most notorious terrorist attack was the abduction of over 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, northern Borno state, in 2014, which remains unresolved to this day.
Ememobong called the government’s response to the terrorist spree “lackluster and unempathetic” and noted that Tinubu has yet to make time to meet the victims of jihad.
Adding to the mounting criticism of the Tinubu government is Peter Obi, a former governor who lost to Tinubu in the last presidential election. Making remarks on social media on Monday, Obi warned that Nigeria was being subjugated by terrorists due to “excuses, indifference, or absentee leadership.”
“Our country is now going through troubling times, not by fate, but by our collective leadership failures that allow insecurity, lawlessness, and institutional decay to thrive,” he wrote. “Each day confronts us with a new tragedy and a new reminder that our beloved country is drifting amid a clear absence of competent, compassionate, responsive and responsible leadership.”
“We have all watched a nation blessed with people of strength and resilience drift into avoidable disorder. We should be asking ourselves: Are we cursed, or are we the curse?” he asked.
Journalists in the country have also risen to criticize the Tinubu government, even as the government reportedly threatens eyewitnesses of the violence not to speak out and browbeats marketers to promote the government’s agenda.
“All said, over the past decade, the frequency of school kidnappings ought to have alarmed the government to the point of building up sufficient knowledge around early warning mechanisms, with the right lessons learnt on how to contain these occurrences,” an editorial published on Monday in the Premium Times asserted, listing these attacks:
They include: the 317 girls kidnapped from Zamfara State in February 2021; 80 students abducted from Federal Government College, Yauri, also in 2021; the 2020 seizure of 344 schoolboys in Kankara in Katsina State; and 140 students taken away from Bethel Baptist High School, Kaduna.
The school kidnappings, the editorial continued, was “a major indictment of the security agencies.” The Premium Times demanded that the government not just use more force to contain terrorist violence, but published a list of 400 suspected terrorist financiers that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) reportedly compiled in 2022.
Tinubu has largely remained in the background of the Nigerian government’s response to the genocide, handing over the issue to the Ministry of Defense. Defense Minister Muhammed Badaru announced on Monday that he would reportedly overhaul the national intelligence apparatus and increase funding in intelligence technology.
“Threats are no longer defined by terrain or manpower, but by the speed, precision and depth of information we can access and act upon,” Badaru asserted. “Technology is a tool. It is the trained, disciplined and dedicated intelligence officer who transforms raw data into national defence.”
https://www.breitbart.com/africa/2025/11/24/nigerian-president-faces-calls-to-resign-at-home-over-anti-christian-jihad/
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