Nigeria: Freedom of Religion or Belief

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[David Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I have been very pleased to meet Mubarak Bala twice now, most recently in person in Warsaw. He is a great credit to himself. He has suffered very unjustly as a result of being a humanist. I am sure we will hear this from the Minister, but the Government seem to be very clear that we should not be supporting blasphemy laws, and we do see people suffering as a result of them.

In the interests of time, I will move on and maybe not take any interventions for a moment.

Why does this matter to us? We are 3,000 miles away from Nigeria, but we are linked by history, culture and language, and we are linked by friendship. Nigeria and the United Kingdom have a very strong relationship. It would be easy to dismiss Nigeria’s problem as something “over there” and think that persecution of religion or belief abroad is not our problem, but that position would be irresponsible, immoral and ultimately untenable.

It is immoral because when we see other humans in need, we want to respond, as humans. How could we turn away from the suffering in Nigeria when we see families ripped apart, innocent people killed and power brokers restricting the agency, liberty and conscience of others? We in the UK have a rich history of experiencing and rejecting religious intolerance that we can share in humility, hopefully, with others. We had civil wars and riots. Those riots became debates, debates became freedoms, and those freedoms led to flourishing. The hallmark of freedom is wanting freedom for others.

That brings me to irresponsibility. It would be irresponsible to assume that Nigeria’s problems are not our own. Nigeria is playing an increasingly influential role globally. It is young, resource-rich and growing. The UN has projected that Nigeria will become the third most populous country on Earth by 2050, and as I have said, the UK is home to a substantial and growing community of Nigerian-born residents. They are a hard-working, law-abiding, enterprising part of our nation, and we are privileged to have them with us. Working well with Nigeria is in our interest for the sake of all.

Nigeria also represents a genuine democracy in a region where military Governments are common and civil society precarious. As climate change disrupts the Sahel and central Africa further, the promise of a resilient Nigeria with a strong sense of its future as a pluralist democracy cannot be understated.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

I am hugely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for his excellent speech. He is giving a powerful evocation of the significant crisis that exists within Nigeria in terms of intolerance and faith-related death. Can he indicate—this is a genuine question of inquiry—to what extent there are intersections with other sources of conflict such as terrorism and the resource competition he mentioned, and potentially even climate change? To what extent are those drivers of the kind of religious intolerance that we see playing out in his speech?

[David Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw other factors into the equation, whether it is competition over land in the middle belt of Nigeria, the climate change that leads to it, or other forms of identitarian conflict and competition for resources. Those things are true, without question. In my estimation it is also true that there is a specifically religious dimension, and at times a political dimension, to the persecution—I would say it can be both at the same time.

I am concerned that this can lead to a slippery slope. For example, we could compare it with the situation in China, where Tibetan Buddhists have been persecuted for years. That was later followed by a crackdown on Falun Gong and Christians, and religious prisoners ultimately end up joined by journalists, activists, trade unionists and other rabble rousers who the state would prefer not to deal with. We must robustly defend freedom of religion or belief, to avoid that slippery slope.