Sowore accuses U.S. of hypocrisy over killings, says Nigeria’s genocide targets everyone
Human rights activist and presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, has accused the United States and the Nigerian government of hypocrisy in their handling of widespread killings across the country.
Sowore said the violence ravaging Nigeria was rooted in bad governance and insecurity, not religion, and cautioned against framing the crisis as persecution of a particular faith.
He was reacting to renewed calls by some U.S. lawmakers for Nigeria to be designated a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) over alleged Christian persecution.
According to the AAC leader, such claims were misleading, politically motivated, and failed to reflect the realities on the ground.
“There’s genocide against the poor in this country, there’s genocide against Muslims, there’s genocide against Christians, there’s genocide against children. To now separate it and say maybe it’s one religion or the other, that’s dishonest,” Sowore said.
“Interestingly, Nigeria doesn’t count or do DNA tests on people who are killed to determine whether they are carrying a Bible or a Koran,” he added.
He questioned the logic of foreign powers portraying Nigeria’s insecurity through a religious lens while ignoring other mass atrocities globally.
“Why is the U.S. not taking the same position in Gaza, where there’s genocide against Muslims by Israel?” he asked, describing Washington’s position as “international hypocrisy.”
Sowore noted that insecurity in Nigeria affects people across regions and religions, insisting that the real issue was leadership failure.
“In a country where they are killing 6,000 people a day, you did not designate the killer as a genocidal government. I’m not defending what is happening in Nigeria, but the problem has nothing to do with religion. It’s complete irresponsible leadership and insecurity that kill everybody,” he said.
He added that most terrorist attacks occur in the North, where both Christians and Muslims are victims.
“When you talk about insecurity in this country today, it happens more in the North, in the Muslim part of the North. That’s the truth. They go to mosques and kill people. Just recently, about 35 people were killed in a mosque, and those who killed them were not Christians; they were probably people who identify as Muslims,” Sowore said.
The activist warned that attributing the crisis to religious persecution gives Nigerian leaders an “alibi” to evade accountability.
“We like to water down the responsibility of our leaders. Then the U.S. comes up with a policy to say we want to protect Christians. Okay, let’s bring a big boat and take all the Christians out and see if nobody will get killed again,” he said.
Sowore maintained that until the Nigerian government confronts insecurity and corruption head-on, citizens of all faiths would continue to die needlessly.
In a related development, a U.S. lawmaker, Riley M. Moore, called on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to take decisive diplomatic action against the Nigerian government over what he described as the “systematic persecution and slaughter of Christians.”
In a letter dated Oct. 6, 2025, Moore said Nigeria had become “the deadliest place in the world to be a Christian,” urging the U.S. government to redesignate the country as a CPC under the U.S. International Religious Freedom Act.
He also urged Washington to “use all diplomatic tools available,” including halting arms sales to Nigeria, until the government demonstrates greater commitment to ending the killings.
