Only 177 Christians killed, 102 churches attacked in five years – Tinubu’s Foreign Minister on Piers Morgan Show

A tense and heated exchange unfolded on Piers Morgan’s show Tuesday as Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, defended the government’s position on allegations of targeted killings of Christians in the country.

The discussion, which also featured former Canadian MP Goldie Ghamari, focused on claims of religious persecution and the broader security challenges facing Nigeria.

Morgan opened the segment by citing figures from the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), suggesting that over 50,000 Christians have been killed since 2009 and 18,000 churches destroyed. Tuggar immediately disputed these numbers, describing them as inaccurate and questioning the framing of violence in purely religious terms.

According to the minister, Nigeria does not categorise victims by faith, emphasizing that all citizens are Nigerians first. He stated that only 177 Christians had been killed and 102 churches attacked in the past five years, highlighting the complexity of the nation’s security situation rather than attributing attacks to a single faith.

The exchange escalated when Ghamari alleged that Nigeria’s insecurity was a form of jihad and linked the crisis to President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima’s shared Islamic faith. She also raised concerns about the Nigerian government’s alleged ties with Iran and the display of Iranian leadership imagery in Nigerian schools.

Tuggar responded firmly, dismissing her comments as uninformed and misleading. He accused Ghamari of treating the lives of Nigerians as a political tool from afar, saying:

“People like her trade in starting wars in faraway places where they have no contact, no understanding. For her, it’s just another black country to be broken up. She doesn’t care who dies.”

He further stressed that religion is not the defining factor in Nigeria’s security challenges. Recounting personal loss, Tuggar said,

“I lost my father-in-law to an attack by Boko Haram. But it doesn’t matter whether the victims are Muslim or Christian—the aim is to kill and maim. Boko Haram’s number one enemy is often a Muslim who refuses to subscribe to their brand of extremism.”

Ghamari maintained that attacks on Christians were deliberate and constituted targeted persecution. Tuggar countered that sensationalised international narratives risked destabilising Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, which continues to host migrants and maintain religious freedoms across communities.

By the end of the discussion, tensions remained high. Tuggar accused Ghamari of seeking clout through inflammatory rhetoric and warned against attempts to “break up Nigeria the same way Sudan was divided.” Morgan concluded the segment shortly after.