Manny Ita –
US-based conservative commentator and television host Tony Perkins has said he declined to grant Nigeria’s First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, access to his media platform, alleging that her appearance would have been used to “cover up Christian genocide” in Nigeria.
Perkins, who is also the president of the Family Research Council, made the claim while speaking about security challenges in Nigeria and what he described as the persecution of Christians, particularly in parts of the Middle Belt and northern regions. He stated that the decision to deny the First Lady airtime was deliberate and rooted in his assessment of the Nigerian government’s handling of violence affecting Christian communities.
“I refused to give her my platform to cover up Christian genocide,” Perkins was quoted as saying, arguing that allowing the First Lady to appear would have amounted to endorsing what he claimed was an attempt to downplay or obscure the scale of attacks on Christians in the country.
According to him, international audiences are often presented with what he described as a sanitized version of Nigeria’s security crisis, while communities on the ground continue to suffer deadly attacks. Perkins alleged that Nigerian officials routinely attribute the violence to farmer-herder clashes or banditry, narratives he said fail to capture what he believes is a targeted campaign against Christians.
He further claimed that religious freedom advocates and faith-based organisations have repeatedly raised concerns about killings, abductions and displacement of Christian populations, but that these concerns are not adequately acknowledged by the Nigerian authorities. “The reality on the ground is far different from what government representatives want the world to see,” he said.
The comments have sparked reactions online, with some supporters backing Perkins’ stance as a bold defence of persecuted Christians, while others criticised his language and accused him of oversimplifying Nigeria’s complex security challenges and inflaming religious tensions.
The Nigerian government has consistently rejected claims of religiously motivated genocide, maintaining that the country’s security problems are driven by criminality, terrorism and longstanding communal conflicts, and insisting that victims cut across religious and ethnic lines. Senator Oluremi Tinubu has not publicly responded to Perkins’ remarks as of the time of reporting.
