The Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, Mahmoud Youssouf, has said there is no evidence to support claims of targeted killings of Christians in northern Nigeria, insisting that the security situation in the region cannot be described as genocide.
Speaking with journalists at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Youssouf warned that narratives portraying events in northern Nigeria as “Christian genocide” oversimplify a complex and evolving security landscape.
According to him, Muslims were among the earliest and most affected victims of the Boko Haram insurgency.
“The first victims of Boko Haram are Muslims, not Christians. And I’m saying it with documented references,” he said.
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Youssouf cautioned against the use of what he called “easy words” to describe a multifaceted crisis, noting that the AU has consistently maintained in its reports and communiqués that there is no genocide taking place in northern Nigeria.
“The complexity of the northern part of Nigeria should not be taken that easily,” he said. “The African continent is very complex… that is why the AU Commission is very clear about that. We would like to stress again that there is no genocide in northern Nigeria.”
Claims of a Christian genocide in Nigeria have circulated widely in international media and across social platforms, particularly among some political figures in the United States.
In response to these claims, a group of US lawmakers recently urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to take diplomatic action over what they described as “systematic persecution and slaughter of Christians” in the country.
Following the lawmakers’ petition, US President Donald Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern (CPC)” over alleged Christian persecution, warning that the Nigerian government could lose US aid if it failed to address the issue.
The federal government has repeatedly dismissed the allegations.
However, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) maintains that Christian communities in several regions of the country continue to suffer recurrent and deadly attacks.