The Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI) has faulted the decision of U.S. President Donald Trump to redesignate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), accusing the White House of acting on misleading and politically driven data.
In a policy statement signed by IMPI Chairman, Dr. Omoniyi Akinsiju, the think tank alleged that certain local and international organisations supplied “inflammatory and exaggerated” figures to present Nigeria as a hostile environment for Christians.
IMPI named the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) and Open Doors International among groups it claims have pushed a skewed narrative of religious extermination in Nigeria.
The organisation expressed concern that these statistics — widely shared in advocacy circles — have helped entrench a global perception that Christians in Nigeria are being systematically wiped out.
“Every loss of life is tragic and unacceptable,” IMPI said. “However, it is equally immoral to fabricate figures simply to sustain a narrative or influence foreign policy decisions.”
According to the group, while some NGOs allege thousands of Christian casualties each year, the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) shows a starkly different picture. GTI recorded a continual decline in terrorism-related deaths in Nigeria up to 2022 — dropping to 392 fatalities, the lowest since 2011. Although the trend reversed slightly in 2023 and 2024, IMPI maintains that the figures remain nowhere close to those circulated by advocacy organisations.
The think tank cited examples:
- Intersociety’s claim of 5,068 Christian deaths in 2022, and 8,222 between January 2023 and January 2024
- Open Doors’ report that Nigeria accounted for 82% of Christian killings globally in 2023
- Another report alleging 7,087 Christian deaths in the first 220 days of 2024
All of these, IMPI insists, contradict verified data sources.
“This is not genocide,” the group argued. “These inflated numbers are crafted to fuel alarm, divide Nigerians along religious lines and justify punitive foreign actions.”
IMPI accused the Trump administration of failing to fact-check claims before restoring Nigeria’s CPC designation, adding that such a consequential decision should be grounded in verified intelligence, not activist pressure.
The group also traced what it described as a long-running pattern of data manipulation by Intersociety since 2019 — alleging that the NGO routinely attributes nearly all violent deaths in the country to Christian victims, regardless of context or motive.
Calling the CPC reinstatement “ill-advised and diplomatically damaging,” IMPI urged the U.S. government to re-evaluate its stance through direct engagement with Nigerian authorities and credible data sources.
The organisation concluded that only an objective reassessment would reverse the “mislabeling” of Nigeria and repair the harm done by what it termed “an industry of misinformation.”