Nigerian Christians reflect on former President Buhari after his death

YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – Catholic leaders in Nigeria offer contrasting assessments of the role played by the immediate former President, Muhammadu Buhari, regarding the persecution of Christians in the country.

The Secretary General of the Regional Episcopal Conference of West Africa (RECOWA), Father Vitalis Anaehobi, asserts that Buhari was receptive to the Church.

“During his eight years in office,” the priest stated, “the late president Muhammadu Buhari’s doors were always open to the Catholic Church in Nigeria.”

Buhari died at the age of 82 on July 13, and had served as president of Nigeria from 2015-2023. He was also a military ruler in the country from Dec. 31, 1983 until August of 1985.

Anaehobi explained that this access allowed bishops to repeatedly voice concerns about escalating poverty, insecurity, kidnappings, and killings of clergy, attacks on Christian villages, and the burning of churches.

“The bishops never lacked the opportunity to make the president know about all the evils that were taking place during his reign,” the priest told ACI Africa.

However, Emeka Umeagbalasi – the director of the Catholic-inspired NGO Intersociety – remembered the late leader as a persecutor of Christians. He told Crux that Buhari effectively made the persecution of Christians “state policy.”

He said during his time in power, Buhari recruited “foreign jihadists” who are today causing attacks on Christians, explaining that the late president caused “all the killings by way of policies and his state conquest Islamization agenda.”

Allegations persist that retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari, upon becoming Nigeria’s president, did not govern with a commitment to the country’s multicultural, pluralistic, or multi-religious character.

“Instead, he pursued an agenda to Islamize Nigeria, using all available means. To this end, he established networks of agents, recruited external actors, and empowered ineffective leaders tasked specifically with advancing Islamization in Nigeria’s eastern regions, particularly the Southeast,” Umeagbalasi told Crux.

He claimed that the Buhari administration facilitated the entry of various militias into Nigeria, such as the Fulani herdsmen, and other foreign jihadists. This influx was allegedly enabled by the government’s decision to open Nigerian borders widely in 2017.

A 2017 report by Intersociety accused the Buhari government of orchestrating the import of some fifty terrorist groups.

Umeagbalasi also attacked the Buhari administration for imposing Islamic radicalization on Nigeria’s security forces, including the Nigerian police and the State Security Service (SSS).

Data compiled by Intersociety and corroborated by International Christian Concern (ICC) shows that over 18,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria between 2015 and 2023. This period coincided with Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, during which his administration faced widespread criticism for perceived inaction against Fulani militias systematically targeting Christian farming communities.

Under Buhari, Nigeria became the deadliest country in the world to be a Christian, according to Open Doors’ World Watch List.

Yet, not once during his presidency did Buhari publicly condemn Fulani militia attacks on Christians, even though the perpetrators were largely from his own ethnic group.

“He came in with an agenda to Islamize Nigeria,” said Umeagbalasi told Crux. He said that while terrorist organizations like Boko Haram had been dogging Nigeria for years, Buhari bears responsibility for the advent of Jihadist Fulani herdsmen who have in recent years, become the deadliest terrorist group in Nigeria.

Buhari himself is a Fulani man, and by Umeagbalasi’s logic, the Nigerian president not only had to protect them, he also wanted them to overrun whole communities and take over their lands for grazing.

“Buhari’s Fulani heritage influenced his government’s protection of militant herders, leading to the massacre of thousands of Christians,” Umeagbalasi told Crux.

“The Buhari administration’s failure to address the systematic violence against Christians amounts to state-sponsored persecution,” Intersociety stated in its 2023 report titled Nigeria: The State of Nigeria’s 2022 Killings.

Yet, Buhari chose to frame the killings as resulting from climate change.

“With climate change and population growth and the culture of the cattle rearers, if you have 50 cows and they eat grass, any root, to your water point, then they will follow it. It doesn’t matter whose farm it is,” Buhari once offered as a way of an explanation.

Umeagbalasi says even the administration of President Bola Tinubu hasn’t changed course, despite making public statements to the contrary.

He said the governors, the military and even some clergy are all complicit in the ongoing “genocide” against Christians.

“The value of human life is greater than that of a cow,” Tinubu said recently after visiting Benue state where one of the worst massacres of Christians took place. A series of attacks across the state between June 8 and 14 led to the deaths of over 220 people.

The president received praise for calling out the attackers, but it doesn’t appear that beyond that public display of concern, anything of note has followed in terms of seeking justice for the victims.