Timeframe: November 2021 – December 2022
Location: Abuja, Washington D.C., Rome
Key Actors: Secretary Antony J. Blinken, Senator Robert
Menendez, USCIRF Commissioners, President Muhammadu Buhari
Epigraph:
“Delisting Nigeria sends the wrong message to perpetrators of
religious persecution.”
— Gayle Manchin, USCIRF Chair, 17 November 2021 [1].
The Camera Lens
The State Department press room was half-empty when the one-line announcement landed: Nigeria, previously designated a “Country of Particular Concern” for religious freedom violations, had been struck from the blacklist. No elaborate briefing, no accompanying sanctions—just a pivot. In Abuja, officials celebrated the move as a diplomatic victory ahead of Secretary Blinken’s visit; in churches across the Middle Belt and mosques across Zamfara the news was met with disbelief. For families who had catalogued massacres from Benue to Kaduna, Washington appeared to be rewarding silence, not reform.
Blinken arrived in Abuja two days later, praising cooperation on vaccines and security while carefully avoiding the rendition scandal that still dominated Nigerian headlines. Outside the U.S. embassy, placards from IPOB supporters asked how a government that spirited a British citizen out of Nairobi overnight could be treated as a reliable rights partner. The delisting, they argued, would become Exhibit A in Abuja’s claim that the world approved of its tactics.
Diplomatic cables later released under FOIA show that the policy shift was justified as a recalibration designed to “preserve leverage” with Abuja on counterterrorism support [2]. Nigerian lobbyists in Washington framed the move as recognition of progress against Boko Haram while downplaying killings in the South East. Yet, contemporaneous reporting from Open Doors and CSW recorded attacks on churches in Miango and Gwer West even as Blinken’s entourage posed for photos in Aso Rock [3].
USCIRF issued a rare public rebuke, calling the decision “inexplicable” and pointing to data from ACLED that showed an increase in religiously motivated attacks between 2020 and 2021 [1]. On Capitol Hill, Senator Robert Menendez demanded a classified briefing, while Representatives Chris Smith and French Hill introduced a resolution seeking restoration of the CPC label. Nigerian diaspora groups piggybacked on the outrage, submitting dossiers that paired the Port Harcourt rally shootings with testimonies from burned-out communities in Plateau State.
Within weeks, military raids in Owerri and Orlu escalated. Amnesty International documented fresh disappearances, interpreting the delisting as a green light for aggressive operations against IPOB cells [4]. Officials in Abuja cited Washington’s decision to argue that all critics were amplifying “fake genocide” narratives. Kanu’s lawyers, meanwhile, referenced the reversal in every court filing, warning that only external pressure could restrain intelligence agencies now absolved by their most important ally.
The “Blinken Error” became shorthand within the movement for how geopolitics can erase victims. By removing Nigeria from the CPC list without transparent benchmarks, Washington inadvertently weakened every civil society actor pleading for restraint. Abuja pocketed the win, while the people caught between herdsmen raids and security crackdowns were left with another unanswered question: if not now, when?