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The leader of Nigeria’s Christians called on the United States on Tuesday to declare the Islamist group Boko Haram to be terrorists, but a US official said it was more important to address social inequalities.
In an unusually blunt appeal by a foreigner before the US Congress, the head of the main Christian body in religiously divided Nigeria said that a decision to blacklist three Boko Haram leaders as terrorists did not go far enough.
Ayo Oritsejafor (pictured), president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, said that the US move on June 21 was “the equivalent of designating (Osama) bin Laden a terrorist but failing to designate al-Qaeda a terrorist organisation.”
Oritsejafor said that the reluctance to brand Boko Haram as terrorists had emboldened the group, which is estimated to have killed more than 1,000 people since mid-2009 in attacks on Christian and government sites.
“By refusing to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organisation, the United States is sending a very clear message, not just to the federal government of Nigeria, but to the world that the murder of innocent Christians and Muslims who reject Islamism — and I make a clear distinction here between Islam and Islamism — are acceptable losses,” Oritsejafor said.
“It is hypocritical for the United States and the international community to say that they believe in freedom and equality when their actions do not support those who are being persecuted,” he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told the hearing that Boko Haram was not homogeneous and that most of the group had the goal of trying to “embarrass or discredit” the government.
Carson said the terrorist designation made sense for the three leaders — Abubakar Shekau, Abubakar Adam Kambar and Khalid al-Barnawi — due to links to al-Qaeda but that it would be counterproductive to target the entire movement.
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