A heated confrontation erupted between Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, and a Canadian Member of Parliament, Goldie Ghamari, during a tense interview with Piers Morgan.
This was seen in a video SaharaReporters obtained on Wednesday circulating widely across media platforms.
The exchange quickly degenerated into a fierce argument after Goldie accused the Nigerian government of refusing to acknowledge what she repeatedly described as a targeted killing of Christians in Nigeria.
Goldie insisted that “there is definitely a problem with Islamist terrorism,” but argued that “just because Muslims are being murdered, it does not negate the fact that there is a targeted ethnic cleansing of Christian Nigerians.”
She said, “One does not negate the other,” adding that Nigeria faces “an Islamist problem” that goes beyond Boko Haram.
According to her, “it’s not just Boko Haram, it’s also the Fulani militants,” whom she described as “Fulani Islamists… generally targeting the Christian Nigerians, especially in the Plateau belt.”
She claimed she had interviewed victims and watched “videos where you have the Fulani militants… on their motorcycles with machetes… and you have the Nigerian military… getting orders to stand down.”
Goldie accused the minister of dodging questions, saying he was “avoiding questions” and “avoiding eye contact,” and instead “trying to attack me… because I’m not as familiar with the constitution.”
She alleged that “over 50,000 Christians have been murdered since 2009,” insisting that killings accompanied by attackers yelling Allahu Akbar before burning churches “is not just banditry, that’s jihad.”
Goldie further claimed the Nigerian government was unwilling to disclose victims’ identities because acknowledging the numbers would force them to admit “there was a genocide.”
“They don’t want to admit that there’s a genocide, but that’s exactly what’s happening,” she said, adding, “I’m glad President Trump and others are calling it out.”
But an enraged Tuggar fired back, accusing Goldie of exploiting African crises for profit and propaganda.
He said “the lady and people like her trade in starting wars in faraway places where they have no contacts, they have no understanding of.”
He dismissed her credibility, saying Goldie “would not know the difference between a Fulani man, a Tiv man, an Igbo man,” but was making inflammatory statements “because it pays, she’s probably making money out of it.”
Tuggar accused her of attempting to “start a war” and pushing for Nigeria’s destabilisation “the same way they broke up Sudan.” He added that such advocates had abandoned the region once chaos erupted, saying, “She’s not talking about Sudan anymore… This is what they do.”
When asked to give statistics about how many Nigerian Christians have been killed so far, Tuggar sounding incoherently replied, “Over the last year, I can categorically tell you that 177 have been murdered. Yes, so I am telling you the number when churches were attacked. I told you the number of the churches that were attacked in the last five years.
“I keep giving you the numbers, but clearly, since the last five years 177 number injured, 98 number abducted. Okay, so we are not hiding any facts.”
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