The federal government is not happy with the US government for including Nigeria in the list of countries violating religious freedom.
Muhammadu Buhari and Donald Trump
The presidency has rebuffed insinuations by the United States that it violates religious freedom of its citizens and asked the country to stop interfering in Nigeria’s matters.
According to
TORI NEWS, the reaction was given by Femi Adesina, the spokesperson to President Muhammadu Buhari while reacting to a U.S. report that includes Nigeria as one of the countries with religious freedom violations.
Adesina spoke yesterday when he appeared on Channels Television “Sunday Politics” programme.
Recall that the U.S. placed Nigeria in the same category as Russia, Cuba and Uzbekistan for its attitude towards religious freedom.
The inclusion of Nigeria on the list was announced by the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. They made reference to the killings of Shiite protesters and the violence in Nigeria’s middle belt as some of the reasons for its stance.
In its earlier reaction on Sunday, Nigeria government through Minister of Information, Lai Muhammad described the stance of the U.S. as an “orchestrated narrative that has long been discredited”.
The government also blamed the ‘political opposition’ for sparing “no resources in deriving political capital from the various security challenges in the country.”
However, rather than respond to the allegations in the report on Sunday, President Buhari through his spokesperson, Mr Adesina blasted the U.S. government for speaking about Nigeria.
“In international relations, you respect the internal affairs of other countries. The U.S. itself has enough to chew solving its own problems not to talk of poke-nosing into that of another country.”
“No man, no country, nobody has appointed them the policeman of the world, let them face their own issues”, Mr Adesina said.