A former Kaduna Central senator, Shehu Sani, on Sunday faulted American television host Bill Maher’s claim that Nigeria is experiencing systemic killings of Christians, describing the remarks as mischievous and misleading.
Sani, a human rights activist and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, made the clarification on Sunday when he featured as a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
His intervention came just hours after former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, and President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Social Media, Dada Olusegun, also dismissed Maher’s allegations of genocide.
Both political figures said the claims grossly misrepresent Nigeria’s complex security challenges, risk inflaming religious divisions, and undermine counterterrorism gains.
Breaking down the dynamics of violence across the country, Sani insisted that terrorists and bandits do not target victims based on religion.
“We have bandits in the north-western and terrorists in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. In the north-central, we have a mixture of banditry, terrorism, ethno-religious violence, indigenous settlers, and farmers-herdsmen…”
“But it’s important people understand that as far as bandits and terrorists are concerned, they do not discriminate their victims on the basis of their faith. Muslims, just like Christians, are killed by bandits and terrorists. They attack churches and mosques. They kill pastors, priests and imams.
“Just a few weeks ago, there was an attack in a mosque in Kasina where Muslims were killed. There was also an attack a few days ago in Zamfara, in which Muslims were killed. We have attacks in Plateau and Benue State,” Sani explained.
Citing his time in the Senate, the ex-lawmaker argued that political silence, rather than religious targeting, has sometimes skewed public perception of the crisis.
“I think the difference is that I can give my own personal experience. When I was in the Senate, and there were killings in southern and northern Kaduna, you would see the lawmakers from the Christian southern Kaduna standing up on the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives, making it public.
They would raise an alarm on the issue of these attacks and the sufferings of their people, how their people were raped, killed, and their villages were razed.
“But the senators and reps from the northern part of Kaduna who were Muslims, were silent on the basis that the president at that time was a northerner, and that they shouldn’t tell the world that Muslims were also killed,” he stated.
Sani concluded that Maher’s suggestion of a deliberate religious cleansing was both inaccurate and dangerous.
“So, for someone from outside saying that there is a mass slaughter of Christians by Muslims in Nigeria, I think he is just trying to be very mischievous. Muslims and Christians are all victims of this banditry and terrorism going on in the country.
If you look at it statistically, Muslims bear more of the brunt of terrorism and banditry than even the Christians. Because if you look at the theatre of operation of these terrorists and bandits, they are in Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi, Borno and Yobe States. So, if you look at the killings, 95 per cent of people killed were Muslims,” he argued.
Maher, in a viral video that has stirred debate in Nigeria and abroad, alleged that Islamist groups had been responsible for widespread killings of Christians and church burnings over the past decade.
“They are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria. They’ve killed over 100,000 since 2009, they’ve burned 18,000 churches,” Maher claimed.
“This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country.”
The comments have drawn swift reactions from Nigerian political leaders and civil society groups, who argue that such sweeping statements oversimplify a complex conflict marked by terrorism, banditry, and communal violence that has claimed victims across faith lines.
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