The Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI) has faulted United States President Donald Trump’s decision to redesignate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).
Gatekeepers News reports that the group described it as an action based on biased and misleading information supplied by organisations with hidden motives.
In a statement issued by its chairman, Dr. Omoniyi Akinsiju, the group accused certain local and foreign bodies of spreading false statistics to misrepresent Nigeria’s security reality.
It specifically named the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) and Open Doors, a Christian charity, as major sources of the questionable data.
IMPI expressed worry that such groups were deliberately manipulating terrorism-related figures to create the impression that Christians in Nigeria are being systematically targeted.
The statement read, “We are concerned about the inauspicious propagation of terrorism-related deaths in a singular religious conflict situation. However, for starters, we must acknowledge the sensitivity of this subject matter as it affects lives. For us, no single life is deserving of being extinguished for any reason. In the same vein, it is immoral to concoct all manner of death-related data to justify a point of view.”
The organistion noted that the campaign to have Nigeria categorized as a CPC had been driven largely by misinformation shared online and amplified by advocacy groups.
According to IMPI, Intersociety and Open Doors had previously published conflicting and exaggerated figures of faith-related killings in Nigeria — claims that, it said, did not align with verifiable data from reputable global sources.
IMPI said, “Long before this official response, merchants of tainted data had populated the social media space with obtrusive figures.”
“The International Society for the Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) reported that 5,068 Christians were massacred in Nigeria in 2022, while Open Doors’ 2023 World Watch List reported that 5,014 Christians were killed for their faith in Nigeria in 2022, more than in the rest of the world combined. Those figures definitely did not portray the reality on the ground.”
The think tank cited the Global Terrorism Index (GTI), which documented 392 terrorism-related deaths in Nigeria in 2022 — the lowest since 2011 — in contrast to the thousands of deaths reported by the NGOs.
It added that although fatalities rose slightly to 565 in 2024, the figures remained far below the exaggerated numbers used by groups seeking to justify Nigeria’s CPC designation.
“However, fatalities increased by 34 per cent in 2023 to 533, and further to 565 in 2024, but not anywhere near the inflated figures generated by Intersociety, which reported that 8,222 Christians were killed in Nigeria in the 12 months between January 1, 2023, and January 1, 2024, describing it as the ‘deadliest in recent years’.”
“Open Doors also reported that 82% of the 4,998 Christians killed globally for faith-related reasons in 2023 occurred in Nigeria, while the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) recorded 1,637 deaths of Christians between April and June 2023 alone.”
IMPI maintained that while every loss of life is regrettable, Nigeria’s security data — when reviewed through credible global platforms such as GTI and Statista — does not support claims of genocide.
It added, “Based on this background, we find it challenging to accept US President Trump’s decision to designate Nigeria as a CPC based on fictitious data circulated by a collection of NGOs. We expect the US to verify and validate any data presented to President Trump before using it to make a decision.”
The group said its research showed that Intersociety had been publishing manipulated figures since 2019, consistently portraying ordinary acts of violence as targeted religious killings.
It pointed out that, according to GTI, terrorism-related deaths in Nigeria dropped by over 39 percent from 2,043 in 2018 to 1,245 in 2019, largely due to reduced activities by Fulani extremists — a fact also confirmed by Statista.
In contrast, IMPI said, Intersociety claimed over 1,000 Christian deaths in that same year, ignoring broader data sets such as the “Ninth Annual Report on Lethal Violence in Nigeria,” which recorded 11,277 violent deaths across all contexts.
IMPI concluded that the manipulation of statistics by advocacy groups was a deliberate attempt to provoke religious division and influence US policy. It described Trump’s 2020 CPC decision as “highly questionable,” emphasizing that genuine diplomatic engagement between the Nigerian and US governments could correct the distorted narratives and ultimately lead to Nigeria’s removal from the CPC list.
