•HRES 82 IH 
Mass, when terrorists massacred 40 worshippers and 
wounded scores more in a shooting attack on St. Francis 
Xavier Catholic Church in Owo City, in Ondo State, and 
none of the suspects have been convicted and sentenced; 
Whereas the Department of State mischaracterizes or incom-
pletely characterizes the increasing incidents of large 
scale violence in Nigeria’s northern and central rural re-
gions as ‘‘communal clashes’’ between Muslim herders 
and Christian farmers, solely attributable to competition 
for scarce natural resources resulting from climate 
change; 
Whereas USCIRF reports that ‘‘Fulani-affiliated armed 
groups used religious rhetoric while conducting myriad 
attacks on predominantly Christian villages in Kaduna 
State’’, and that ‘‘[k]idnappers also reportedly delib-
erately targeted Christians for abduction and execution’’; 
Whereas USCIRF concludes that the Nigerian Government 
has ‘‘routinely failed to investigate these attacks [on 
Christian communities] and prosecute those responsible, 
demonstrating a problematic level of apathy on the part 
of state officials’’; 
Whereas the UNHCR reports that there are over 2.1 million 
IDPs in northeastern Nigeria, and 304,562 registered 
refugee Nigerians in the Lake Chad region; 
Whereas USCIRF cites Nigeria’s Islamic blasphemy laws 
among the reasons it lists Nigeria as worthy of CPC des-
ignation, given that Nigeria is one of only 7 countries 
with criminal blasphemy laws that carry the death pen-
alty, with such laws existing in the 12 majority-Muslim 
northern Nigerian States; 
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•HRES 82 IH 
Whereas, in 2020, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a Sufi musician, 
was convicted of blasphemy after sharing lyrics on 
WhatsApp and sentenced to death without legal represen-
tation in Kano; Muslim clerics, Abdul and Sheikh 
Abduljabbar Nasiru-Kabara, are now on death row for 
blasphemy in Kano; and Nigeria’s Humanist Association 
and former Muslim Mubarak Bala received a 24-year 
sentence for apostasy in 2022; and 
Whereas, on May 12, 2022, Deborah Yakubu, a Christian 
student, was beaten to death by a mob on her school’s 
campus in Sokoto for alleged blasphemy against Islam on 
WhatsApp, only two suspects were arrested on minor 
charges, and for criticizing Yakubu’s murder, the Sultan 
of Sokoto and Sokoto’s Catholic Bishop Matthew Kukah 
faced serious death threats from others who acted with 
impunity: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That— 
(1) the Secretary of State should immediately 
designate Nigeria a ‘‘country of particular concern’’ 
for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, 
and egregious violations of religious freedom, as 
mandated by the International Religious Freedom 
Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6401 et seq.); and 
(2) in order to ensure that the Secretary of 
State receives more complete and accurate reporting 
and analysis, the President should promptly appoint 
a person of recognized distinction in the fields of re-
ligious freedom and human rights as ‘‘Special Envoy 
for Nigeria and the Lake Chad Region’’ with the 
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•HRES 82 IH 
rank of Ambassador, who reports directly to the Sec-
retary of State and coordinates United States Gov-
ernment efforts to monitor and combat atrocities 
there. 
Æ 
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