Nigerian Bishop Jude Ayodeji Arogundade has issued a scathing response to Irish president Michael D. Higgins for attributing a recent massacre of Nigerian Christians to “climate change,” accusing him of “opportunism.”
“While thanking the Honorable Mr. Higgins for joining others to condemn the attack and offering his sympathy to the victims, his reasons for this gruesome massacre are incorrect and far-fetched,” Arogundade said in a message on social media.
In his June 7 statement on the armed slaughter of some 50 Christians while worshiping on Pentecost Sunday, President Higgins suggested that blaming the actual perpetrators for the attack is worthy of condemnation since the real culprit behind the massacre is “climate change.”
“That such an attack was made in a place of worship is a source of particular condemnation, as is any attempt to scapegoat pastoral peoples who are among the foremost victims of the consequences of climate change,” Higgins wrote.
The Irish president concluded by again invoking climate change, asserting that solidarity is owed “to all those impacted not only by this horrible event but in the struggle by the most vulnerable on whom the consequences of climate change have been inflicted.”
In his response, Ondo Bishop Arogundade, in whose diocese the slaughter took place, excoriated the Irish president’s bewildering attempt to equate terrorism with climate change.
“To suggest or make a connection between victims of terror and consequences of climate change is not only misleading but also exactly rubbing salt to the injuries of all who have suffered terrorism in Nigeria,” the bishop wrote.
“The victims of terrorism are of another category to which nothing can be compared!” he continued. “It is very clear to anyone who has been closely following the events in Nigeria over the past years that the underpinning issues of terror attacks, banditry, and unabated onslaught in Nigeria and in the Sahel Region and climate change have nothing in common.”
Dr. Jude Ayodeji Arogundade, second from right, at the 8th annual St. Christopher’s Inn Board of Directors dinner at The New York Botanical Garden on May 17, 2012, in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Desiree Navarro/Getty Images)
Personal belongings and shoes lie on the ground of St. Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Nigeria, Monday, June 6, 2022, a day after an attack that targeted worshipers. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Efforts to associate “banditry, kidnapping, and gruesome attacks on innocent and harmless citizens of Nigeria with issues concerning climate change and food securities are deflections from the truth,” he stated.
The bishop also noted that anyone following events in Nigeria would realize “that alluding to some form of politics of climate change in our present situation is completely inappropriate.”
Terrorists are on the loose, “slaughtering, massacring, injuring, and installing terror in different parts of Nigeria since over eight years not because of any reasonable thing but because they are evil — period,” he asserted.
The situation of rampant terror in Nigeria “has nothing to do with climate change ideology,” the bishop added.
Although no group has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the Pentecost massacre, the prevalence of Islamic terror attacks in the country and the targeted nature of the assault on Christians assembled in church leave little room for doubt about the religious motivation behind the slaughter.
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last Tuesday, David Curry — president of the Christian persecution watchdog group Open Doors — noted that Nigeria comes in seventh place on his organization’s 2022 World Watch List, which ranks the countries that are most hostile to Christians.
More Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than in any country in the world, and in 2021 alone, 4,650 Christians were slain there for being believers in Jesus — more than one every two hours, Curry observed.