Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, sparked outrage during a live broadcast of Piers Morgan Uncensored on Tuesday when he claimed that only 177 Christians have been killed for their faith in Nigeria over the past five years.
Appearing alongside former Canadian MP Goldie Ghamari, Tuggar pushed back against widely cited reports that tens of thousands of Christians have died in targeted attacks since 2009. “We do not keep records based on religion,” he said, adding that his government’s verified data showed 177 Christians killed and 102 churches attacked in the last five years.
The statement immediately drew a fierce response from Ghamari, who accused the minister of minimising what she described as an ongoing “genocide” and “jihad” against Nigeria’s Christian population. “Shame on this foreign minister for lying,” she said, pointing out that Tuggar repeatedly avoided eye contact while answering questions about the violence.
Tuggar defended his figures as official and accused critics of inflating numbers for political gain. He stressed that Muslims remain the primary victims of groups like Boko Haram and ISWAP, noting that his own father-in-law was murdered by the terrorists.
The explosive exchange comes weeks after the United States redesignated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” for severe violations of religious freedom, citing systematic persecution of Christian communities in the north and Middle Belt regions.
Human-rights organisations rejected Tuggar’s statistics, with the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law maintaining that more than 52,000 Christians have been killed since 2009 — a figure the Abuja government has consistently dismissed as unreliable.
The confrontation has intensified global scrutiny of Nigeria’s handling of religious violence ahead of planned international discussions on the crisis.