Hello, can you hear me? DC, can you hear me? What do you want? Justice. When do you want it? Now. I say, what do you want? Justice. When do you want it? Now. I say, what do you want? Justice. When do you want it? Now. All right. Thank you very much for being here today. I want to start by saying more Christians are killed in Nigeria than the rest of the world combined.
Woo. More Christians are killed in Nigeria than the rest of the world combined. Last year, 72 percent of all Christians killed in the world were in Nigeria.
What’s worse? That has been the single statistic for 13 out of 14 years. Nigeria is the deadliest place in the world to be a Christian. Yes.
And so from the beginning of this programme up to this point, one Christian has been killed already in Nigeria. Every two hours, a Christian is killed in Nigeria. Now, why do we say it is genocide? I want to give you a few quick examples. On Palm Sunday last year, Christians came, Muslims came into a village in my home state of Plateau State, and they killed 54 women and children, and one woman in particular, her name is Lucy.
They killed her two children. They killed her husband, her father-in-law, her mother-in-law. They tried to kill her baby, whom she was holding. They slashed towards her with a machete. She put her hand up to protect her head, and they cut off her hand, and she has a gash in her head, and then they slit the throat of her baby.
And when I went to the hospital to see her, one of the saddest things was she was in one hospital, and her baby was in a different hospital because the baby’s injuries were so life-threatening, he had to go to a specialist hospital. How can you imagine a woman who lost seven members of her family, the only living one was a baby, and he couldn’t even be with her in the same hospital?
And we just kept praying and supporting, and I’m happy to say that the baby survived, and Lucy is alive and handless, a young widow with only a baby remaining from her family. And so we set up a memorial that we were gonna dedicate on Palm Sunday this year for the people who were killed in Zike, in Lucy’s village.
And guess what? Palm Sunday this year again, the Muslim terrorists came back to Plateau State again, and they killed 30 people. They don’t even give us a break to be able to honour those that were killed already. What do we want? Justice. And when do we want it? Now. I said, what do we want? Justice. And when do we want it?
Now. But there is hope 30 years ago, this time 30 years ago, I was imprisoned in Nigeria as a young human rights lawyer. The military dictatorship imprisoned me because I spoke out for justice, for democracy, against persecution. And I thought my life was over because they had assassinated and killed many people.
But guess what? I am alive today, and I’m in America because America welcomed me when my country rejected me. What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now. And so if God could save me from the gulag of a brutal dictator, God can save Nigeria from the clutches of evil Islamists. Amen. Amen. And I say there is hope.
This time last year, who would have thought that someone would speak out for the persecuted in Nigeria? All these years, the US government has been spending money on interfaith dialogue while our people were being killed. And I said to the Biden administration, all these interfaith dialogues you’ve been having, how many times have the terrorists showed up for meetings and conferences?
I said, “You’re just letting our people be killed while you hold conferences.” And guess what? God brought a solution from America that we didn’t even think was possible. And on Christmas Day, President Trump launched missiles into Nigeria. So instead of dialogue, we’re having terrorists die a lot. Amen. We need to move from dialogue to die a lot.
Yes. Talking hasn’t worked. Bullets should talk. But let me tell you why this is even more interesting. President Trump told the Nigerian government, “I’m gonna f- fire missiles. I need your cooperation.” The Nigerian government leaked the information to the terrorists, and they evacuated before the missiles struck.
And so on Christmas Day, nothing happened. They got away with it. And so President Trump did not want that to happen again. And so this year, a couple of months ago, he launched more missiles, and this time they blew up a terror camp, and they killed the chief financial officer for ISIS worldwide. The chief financial officer for ISIS worldwide was in Nigeria.
Now, here’s something I want you to understand so you know how bad this issue is. The terrorist that Trump killed last month, the Nigerian government claimed they had killed him two years ago, and it was a lie. What does that tell you? That elements of the Nigerian government are in bed with the terrorists.
And it took Trump blowing them up to get that guy two years after the Nigerian government claimed he was dead. And so brothers and sisters, I keep saying there is hope, and we’re beginning to see hope rise from America. As I prepare to wrap up my remarks, I want to mention what happened with Dr. Haruna’s church.
Christians in Nigeria are going through the second, the third, and the fourth attack on their families. This is why it’s a genocide. And many Christians were killed in Yobe State in Nigeria. Ninety percent of the churches were attacked in Yobe State, Nigeria. All of the pastors fled Yobe State, Nigeria. And one of the Christian girls who fled from Yobe State ran to the state, Plateau State, where, Dr. Haruna is from. She arrived there on Saturday night fleeing Boko Haram, and on Sunday she went to church in Dr. Haruna’s church, and that day Boko Haram bombed the church, and she died. This is why we say it’s a genocide. They kill Christians, and Christians showed up for the funeral last month, and the terrorists came and attacked them at the funeral and killed more Christians.
And so brothers and sisters, we want to thank President Trump for his intervention in Nigeria, but we want to say we can do more. Yes. As Douglas Button said on a program recently, he said, “What the KKK did to Blacks in America years ago is what the Muslims and jihadists are doing to Nigerian Christians today.”
Yes. You have experienced it before, so you know what it’s like. Churches are being blown up. Sunday school children are being killed, and it is time for the world to arise and to end the worst Christian genocide happening on our planet now. So thank you very much, Save Nigeria Group. Thank you very much, America.
What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now. I say, what do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now. Amen.
STEVE OSEMWEGIE:
Yes. Put your hands together for Barrister Emmanuel Ogebe, international human rights lawyer. Barrister Emmanuel, you were being modest, Barrister Emmanuel. You were being modest. You didn’t mention Sunday Jackson. Barrister Emmanuel was one of those instrumental to the release of a gentleman who was sentenced on death row for defending himself, and he was one of those…
And I thought he would touch on it, but I want him to say a little bit about it.
EMMANUEL OGEBE ESQ:
All right. Now, this is crazy. I did want to talk about it, but there’s not enough time. Yes. Sunday Jackson was a 20-year-old kid who was attacked on his farm by an armed Muslim, and the guy stabbed Jackson twice, and Jackson fought for his life and grabbed the knife back, and he stabbed his attacker three times, and the attacker died.
And Jackson went and told the community and said, “Hey, this is what happened. I defended myself, and I stabbed this guy.” Jackson didn’t know the guy was dead. He just reported himself. The next day, Jackson was arrested and charged with murder. He was on his farm, on his own farmland, and someone he didn’t know showed up and stabbed him, and he was charged with murder.
And Jackson was on death row for 11 years, 11 years. When I heard about Jackson in 2021, I went to prison and visited him, and I said, “Brother, we’re gonna work on your case. This is wrong.” You know what the Nigerian government did? They moved him to a prison in Northeast Nigeria where there was terrorist activity so that we would not have access to our client.
That’s right. And so we fought for Jackson, and in March of last year, the Supreme Court confirmed his death sentence to die by hanging. And I went on national TV, and I said, “Listen, I’m ready to dump my law license because this is evil.” Yes. This is classic self-defence. Yes. He used the attacker’s own knife against his attacker.
So you’re telling me you cannot protect Christians from being killed, but when they defend themselves, you will kill them and finish off the job of the Muslim attacker. That is what the Supreme Court essentially was saying. And so I met with the attorney general of Nigeria three times, and he said, “It’s a state case.
I can’t do anything about it, but I know that this is wrong.” And I said to him, “Write a letter to the governor of that state and tell him, ‘Listen, this is not within my jurisdiction, but this is how I feel.’” And he said, “Sorry, I can’t even do that. I can’t interfere with the state.” But guess what happened.
