● Accuses Nigerian government of frittering $9m on empty propaganda
[Press Release] Prominent pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group – HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) – has described as uneducated and unintelligent propaganda the news attributed to New York Times which claimed that a screwdriver trader based in Onitsha Anambra State was the source of information on the genocide of Christians in Nigeria by Islamic terrorists.
The Civil society organization HURIWA stated that the news report circulating in the Nigerian local press reportedly culled from a New York Times so-called exclusive report which attempted to ruin the reputation of the Executive Director of the Onitsha based Intersociety one of Nigeria’s most respected civil rights organisations, is a direct fallout of the $9 million USD lobbying payment made by the Nigerian government as reported previously by the Nigerian media.
It would be recalled that penultimate week, the prominent pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) said it was nonsensical that the same government that denied that Christians were the targets of attacks genocide by armed Islamic terrorists has decided to fritter a huge chunk of public fund $9 million USD on the meaningless venture to explain to the United States of America what the government is doing for Christians.
HURIWA stated that the media is reporting that according to the lobbying contract document filed with the US Department of Justice, Aster Legal, a law firm in Kaduna state, hired the services of DCI Group on behalf of Nuhu Ribadu, the national security adviser.
The agreement was signed by Oyetunji Olalekan Teslim, the managing partner of Aster Legal, and Justin Peterson, managing member of DCI group, on December 17, 2025.
According to the contract details, the American lobbying firm is expected to “assist the Nigerian government through Aster Legal in communicating its actions to protect Nigerian Christian communities and maintaining U.S support in countering West African jihadist groups and other destabilizing elements”.
HURIWA through the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko debunked the information that the United States relied on information and reports from Emeka Umeagbalasi, a screwdriver trader in Onitsha, Anambra State, to launch air strikes in Nigeria, according to an exclusive report by the New York Times.
The New York Times story, as is being paraded by some sections of the local press in Nigeria, reportedly highlighted how Mr. Emeka Umeagbalasi, a small screwdriver trader in Onitsha, who doubles as a civil society activist, became an influential — and controversial — source for U.S. politicians, including Senator Ted Cruz, in pushing the narrative that Christians are being deliberately targeted for “genocide” in Nigeria.
In October, US President Donald Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” in response to allegations of a Christian genocide in the country.
“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed,” Trump said, blaming radical Islamists for the “mass slaughter”.
A month later, he threatened that the US department of war would invade Nigeria “guns-a-blazing”, to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists if the Nigerian government did nothing to curtail the alleged genocide. On December 26, the US launched air strikes on ISIS terrorists in north-western Sokoto state “at the request of Nigerian authorities”.
According to the report, Umeagbalasi, founder of the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, otherwise called Intersociety, is “an unlikely source of research that U.S. Republican lawmakers have used to promote the misleading idea that Christians are being singled out for slaughter” in Nigeria. Umeagbalasi, alongside his wife, run the non-governmental organisation from his home.
HURIWA however dismissed the news coverage by New York Times as a soft tissue of lies packaged by the paid propagandists that picked up the generous pay package from the president Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration just as HURIWA said the sources of information about the persistent killings of Christians by Islamists and the abductions, assassination of Christian clerics are reported accurately periodically by Nigerian newspapers based on actual happenings of these attacks like the killing of over 50 worshippers at the Catholic Church in Owo, Osun state in which case the Department of State Services is even prosecuting the masterminds of that dastardly attacks on Christians.
Besides, HURIWA said the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of MakurdiMost Reberend Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe amongst several credible Pastors, honoured several invitations by the United States of America’s Congressional panel that heard testimonies about the incessant killings and indeed the genocidal killings of Christians in Nigeria by Islamic terrorists just as HURIWA reminded the New York Times that the Congressional members from the USA Congress visited many sites of these attacks on Churches in Nigeria in many Northern States and took interviews with survivors of these ongoing attacks even as these delegates reportedly briefed the President of the USA.
HURIWA which dismisses the New York Times report on the genocide of Christians in Nigeria in which the American newspaper engaged in a commercial propaganda to damage the truth of the continuous massacres of Christians in Nigeria by Islamic terrorists as a failed propaganda devoid of logic and characterised by incurable pitfalls of fallacies, said conclusively thus: “PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE TRUTH ABOUT GENOCIDE OF CHRISTIANS IN NIGERIA HAS FAILED…
Tinubu’s government is already spending the $9 million slush funds for propaganda against killings of Christians. They tried to rubbish one of the several sources of published data on the casualties. But the propaganda in the media calling Emeka Umeagbalasi of InterSociety as a screwdrivers trader in Onitsha , exposes the idiocy of this propaganda. These government propagandists in USA using New York Times thinks we are all readers without rationality like they are. The genocide of Christians in Nigeria is notorious and these killings are often reported around the globe. For the fact that Emeka Umeagbalasi is sometimes quoted by the media doesn’t make him the sole source of the news on the killings of Christians. Was it Emeka Umeagbalasi that reported all the killings and destruction of Churches by Islamic terrorists documented in news coverages by newspapers in Nigeria and other online media that formed the intelligence used by President Donald John Trump to authorise the Christmas Eve bombing of terrorists in Sokoto last December? How come government of Tinubu gave our $9 million to some idle and small minds with small brains? This is a bad investment by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Even some idle people at the beer sit out @ the press centre in Utako Abuja would do even far better than this US lobbying firm.”
e-Signed
COMRADE EMMANUEL NNADOZIE ONWUBIKO,
NATIONAL COORDINATOR,
HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA). MONDAY, JANUARY 19TH, 2026.
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