By Dr. Eze Ebube – USAToday –
When President Donald Trump forcefully condemned the mass slaughter of Christians in Nigeria – and then took military action – it marked a turning point.
I was born in the southern Nigeria city of Lagos, and our family later moved to the eastern part of the country a few months before a bloody civil war began in earnest. Despite the conflict, strong cultural values in the village helped shape our character and desire for a better future. Everyone supported each other in every aspect of life.
Even after I left in 1978 to build a new life in America, those memories stayed with me – warm stories with moral grounding upon which I built a family, career and future.
That’s not all I carry with me, though. I left Nigeria because, like a great many others, I needed to search for a better tomorrow.But our beloved homeland has descended into a nightmare. Watching what I truly to believe is a genocide in Nigeria unfold for more than a decade has been devastating. It is one thing to read about violence in a distant place; it is another to know the names of the villages, the families and the churches where it happens.
I knew I had to do something. Years ago, I began working closely with colleagues in Washington, DC, Kerri Toloczko and Hank Jones, who started a group called International Christian Foundation for Democracy as a conduit to garnering the attention of U.S. officials and the media.We walked the halls of Capitol Hill and the State Department; we spoke with news outlets. People listened with polite horror and sympathy, promising to elevate the issue to superiors. We worked hard, but nothing changed. The foundation became defunct. For a long time, I felt we were shouting into the wind while suffering back home grew.
When President Donald Trump forcefully condemned the mass slaughter of Christians in Nigeria – and then took military action in December – it marked a turning point. On Capitol Hill, Rep. Riley Moore, R-West Virginia, has amplified that message with leadership, determination and moral clarity. Their voices have finally pushed this crisis into the center of America’s attention.
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