The Senior Pastor of Guiding Light Assembly, Pastor Wale Adefarasin, has questioned what he described as the United States’ “sudden love” for Christians in Nigeria.
Adefarasin’s remark followed President Donald Trump’s designation of Nigeria as a country of particular concern after his recent remarks about alleged religious persecution in the country.
Speaking in a video that went viral on Monday, Adefarasin criticised the Western narrative suggesting that Christians in Nigeria were facing genocide, saying such portrayals were exaggerated and misleading.
“For 40 years that I have been a Christian, there have been killings in southern Kaduna, killings on the plateau, there have been riots,” he said.
“Sometimes, I think it was in France, an image of Prophet Muhammad was defaced. Who remembers that? And as a result of that, there were killings of Christians in Nigeria.”
He explained that while the attacks against Christians in certain parts of the country were real and condemnable, they were not new occurrences and should not be presented as a recent or coordinated extermination campaign.
“It’s nothing new. It doesn’t amount to genocide. The way the West are talking about it, it’s as if a Christian steps on the street, his head will be blown off,” Adefarasin said.
The cleric suggested that the renewed Western attention to Nigeria’s internal challenges might be driven by geopolitical and economic interests rather than genuine concern for religious freedom.
“I’m trying to understand this sudden love for Christians. Is it because we now have one of the largest refineries in the world and no longer have to ship raw materials abroad and bring the finished products? Or is it because of the 21st-century minerals that we now have in our earth, that are used to generate nuclear power for electric vehicles?” he asked.
Adefarasin’s comments come amid escalating diplomatic tension following President Trump’s threat of possible U.S. military action in Nigeria over what he described as the “mass killing of Christians.”
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