Amid escalating killings and kidnappings across Nigeria, a United States Congressman, Bill Huizenga, has accused President Bola Tinubu’s administration of “sitting back” and failing to adequately confront the country’s worsening insecurity. His remarks came during a hearing of the US House Subcommittee on Africa on Thursday, convened to review Nigeria’s redesignation as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), a move reinstated by President Donald Trump on October 31, 2025.
Huizenga criticised Nigeria’s official delegation for allegedly downplaying the crisis during engagements in Washington.
“It ought to be outrageous that it is Christians, moderate Muslims, and anyone being terrorised by these radicalised Islamists in Nigeria, and we’ve got the Tinubu government sitting back and not doing enough”, he said. “I was recently interviewed by Nigerian television, and that was really their question: Is the Tinubu government doing enough? And I had to answer, ‘No, they are not”.
He added that he found it troubling that Nigeria’s representatives offered “excuses” rather than acknowledging the scale of the violence, “It should be rejected and should be called out for what it is”, he said.
The Congressman also faulted sections of the media and some U.S. lawmakers for “denying” or “de-emphasising” the severity of the killings.
“We’ve got neighbours who’ve been missionaries there, who have family and friends there, who know this is going on. Yet, we’ve got not just the mass media, we’ve got people within Congress denying that this is happening”, he said.
Huizenga referenced the Christmas Eve 2023 massacre in Plateau State, which claimed about 200 lives, arguing that it demonstrated that security conditions had not improved. His comments followed Trump’s renewed claims of systematic persecution of Christians in Nigeria and indications that military options were being reviewed.
The Nigerian Government has strongly rejected the allegations. President Tinubu insisted, “Nigeria stands firmly as a democracy governed by constitutional guarantees of religious liberty. The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our reality”.
Nigeria was first designated a CPC in 2020 under Trump, but was removed from the list by former President Joe Biden shortly after taking office.
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