MURIC accuses US of bias over planned sanctions on Nigerian Muslims

 

The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has criticised proposed United States sanctions aimed at notable Muslim individuals and groups in Nigeria, describing the action as “lopsided, unjust and selective.”

Five US lawmakers recently introduced a bill proposing visa restrictions and asset freezes against former Kano State Governor and New Nigerian People’s Party leader, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, as well as the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria and Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, among others.

MURIC’s Executive Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, said in a statement posted on the organisation’s website on Thursday that the planned sanctions ignored alleged abuses by government officials in Southern Nigeria and leaders of Christian militia groups in the North Central region, whose activities he said had affected Muslim residents and travellers for decades.

The statement was titled, “US sanctions on Muslim figures in Nigeria ‘lopsided’ – MURIC.”

He said: “We take the decision of the US Congress to sanction Muslims alone with a pinch of salt. It amounts to scapegoating, preconceived judgement and crusade-brandishing.

“Coming to Nigeria with the avowed aim of protecting Christians carries with it the implications of coming to promote Christianity, coming to deter the prosecution of Christian criminals who are behind the killing of hundreds of Muslim travellers in Plateau State, coming to undermine Islam, coming to persecute Muslims and coming to encourage Muslim haters.”

Akintola stressed that both Muslim and Christian extremists were responsible for acts of violence and maintained that any sanctions should be “comprehensive and unbiased, not selective and lopsided.”

It read, “As a Muslim human rights group that has been in operation for 32 years (since 1994), MURIC has records of proven acts of inhumanity, discrimination, marginalization, denial of religious freedom and other acts of violation of rights committed by individual Christian state actors in Southern Nigeria as well as criminal Christian militia groups, and we are prepared to present them to the US or the United Nations or any other international audience if given the opportunity.”

He further warned: “For the avoidance of doubts, we assert clearly, unequivocally and emphatically that Christian militia groups of North Central Nigeria who are well known by the state governments have killed thousands of Muslims in the past decades.

“If, therefore, Northern Muslims are being marked for sanctions, present and past governors and government officials of North Central Nigeria who have funded, enabled and protected Christian terrorists in the zone deserve conspicuous spaces on the list.”

Akintola also accused the US of favouring Christian voices from Nigeria, saying the approach undermined justice and fairness.

“We nurse the suspicion that even US officials have always preferred to listen to Nigerian Christians without seeking to hear from Muslims to balance the stories and for justice, equity and fairness.

“This explains why the US Congress has always been anxious to invite Christian activists and clergymen from Nigeria without inviting their Muslim counterparts. This attitude is contrary to the well known principle of justice (audi alteram partem i.e. hear from the other side),” he said.

The activist expressed concern over what he called “the arrival of the age of conversion to Christianity at gunpoint,” which he alleged was being aided by US involvement:

“As at today, the 12th of February, 2026, we nurse the palpable fear… Muslims have become endangered species in Nigeria. For the world to believe the US is not on a recycled crusade, the US needs to sanction the following: Southern Nigeria governors and their government officials who go out of their way to deprive Muslims of their Allah-given fundamental human rights; those who disenfranchise Muslims by denying them voters cards on account of their dressing as Muslims; those who defy court judgements and violate the rights of the Muslim girl child; those who compel Muslim students to attend church services or face expulsion from school on university campuses; those who deny Muslims access to public health, education services, national identity cards, driving licences, international travelling passports, etc by telling women to remove their hijab and the men to remove their caps or turbans; those who deny employment opportunities to eminently qualified Muslim applicants on account of their being Muslims as well as those who marginalise Muslims in political appointments in Nigeria’s Southern states where Muslims are the majority (particularly in four Yoruba states of the South West: Lagos, Ogun, Oyo and Osun).”

He added: “The US must not turn its eyes away from all these atrocities committed by Nigerian Christians against their Muslim compatriots on a daily basis, even up till this morning because we receive reports of these human rights abuses against Muslims everyday. Education, health and virtually all vital sectors have been occupied by Nigerian Christians in Southern Nigeria and weaponized to commit grave human rights offences against Muslims.

“Nigerian Muslims have no reason to antagonise America. Neither has there ever been any declared hostility between the US and Nigerian Muslims. It is also true that apart from millions of Americans who are Muslims, hundreds of Nigerian Muslims make their living in the US. It is therefore in our mutual interest to avoid tension.

“This is why the US needs to do more findings before labeling or sanctioning law-abiding and peace-loving Nigerian Muslims. Boko Haram and ISIS terrorists should not be given the chance to rejoice at having succeeded in killing moderate Muslims and at the same time getting America to sanction them!”