A fiery confrontation erupted on Piers Morgan’s programme as Nigeria’s foreign affairs minister Yusuf Tuggar and former Canadian lawmaker Goldie Ghamari engaged in a combative exchange over allegations of large-scale persecution of Christians in Nigeria.
The clash unfolded as both guests forcefully defended opposing narratives and challenged each other’s credibility in real time.
The debate intensified quickly as Tuggar pushed back against claims he said were rooted in distorted statistics and misrepresentations of Nigeria’s complex security realities.
He repeatedly insisted that narratives framing Nigeria’s conflict along religious lines were inaccurate and harmful to public understanding.
The discussion later included multiple references to figures widely circulated by international advocacy organisations that have documented decades of killings linked to extremist violence across the country.
These statistics have long shaped global conversations around religious persecution in Nigeria and were again cited during the programme.
The show aired on Tuesday and featured Morgan presenting figures from the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law alleging that more than 50,000 Christians had been killed and 18,000 churches destroyed since 2009.
Tuggar rejected the numbers as misleading and argued that the government does not categorise fatalities by religion and treats all victims as Nigerians. When the host pressed him for official data the minister said only 177 Christians had been killed and 102 churches attacked in the past five years.
Tension escalated when Morgan invited Ghamari into the conversation. The former Canadian politician argued that Nigeria’s security crisis amounts to jihad and linked it to the October 7 2023 Hamas assault on Israel.
She also referenced the Muslim identities of President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima as evidence of what she called an enabling Islamist government.
