Benue State Governor Hyacinth Alia on Wednesday dismissed claims that religious genocide is taking place in the state, refuting a narrative reportedly used by some U.S. government officials in their push to classify Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern.
Speaking in Abuja at a consultative forum on the protection of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and Forcibly Displaced Persons (FDPs), organised by the National Human Rights Commission, the governor, a Catholic priest before entering politics, insisted that such assertions do not reflect the reality in Benue.
“In my state of Benue, we don’t have any religious, any ethnic, any racial, any national or state genocide. We don’t have that.
Do we have a number of insecurities in the state? Yes, we do. But it is not a genocide. Someone would need to… check the United Nations definitions for this,” the governor stated.
He further rejected suggestions that any form of jihad is underway in the country. This is despite the fact that the two dominant terror organisations in the North-east, Boko Haram and ISWAP, have long declared intentions to impose Islamic rule based on extremist interpretations of the Qur’an considered widely uncredible by scholars.
Boko Haram’s goal focuses on establishing an Islamic state within Nigeria, while ISWAP aims to create a wider caliphate spanning West Africa in alignment with ISIS ideology.
“We do not have any jihad in Nigeria,” Governor Alia maintained on Wednesday. “I’m speaking to you as a reverend father in the church. I’m speaking to you as a governor of a state. If there were any, particularly in my state or any part of Nigeria, I would have been the very number one person to make a noise.”