A think tank group, the Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI), has described as jaundiced and obstrusive, the data the. President of the United States, Donald Trump based his decision to redesignate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).
This was as the policy group took a swipe at local and international groups with ulterior motives for producing fabricated data on killings in Nigeria.
In a statement signed by its Chairman, Dr Omoniyi Akinsiju, the think tank identified Intersociety, a local non-governmental organization, and Open Doors, a Christian charity as two of the entities as culpable. He stated that duo has been spawning false data to misrepresent the security situation in Nigeria.
The IMPI expressed concern at the manner groups with vested interests were manipulating terrorism-related data to paint Nigeria as a country where Christians are facing existential threats.
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 circulation of falsehoods in the campaign to designate Nigeria a CPC jurisdiction has become a worrisome trend. Our findings showed that it became a tool exploited by both Nigeria and foreign-based non-governmental organizations, as well as other vested interests, to drive their demands.
“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 IMPI argued that its findings indicate that the total number of terrorism-related fatalities in Nigeria were not as high as the figures provided by InterSociety and Open Doors as data of Christian deaths alone.
“In contrast to the figures being bandied by these NGOs, the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) for 2022 noted that there were 6,701 deaths from terrorism globally, a 9 per cent decrease from the previous year and 38 per cent lower than the 2015 peak. The number of terrorism incidents globally also fell by nearly 28 per cent, from 5,463 in 2021 to 3,955.