Congressman Frank Wolf: Nigeria & International Religious Freedom

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Congressman Frank Wolf was widely acknowledged as the “conscience” of the Congress during his long service in the House of Representatives. First elected in 1980, he left Congress at the end of his 17th term in 2015 to focus exclusively on human rights and religious freedom.

Long before the “Arab Spring” turned into an “Arab Winter,” Congressman Wolf sounded the alarm about the worsening plight of religious minorities, notably the ancient Christian communities in both Iraq and Egypt.

He has recently returned from a trip to Nigeria. Nigeria is on the verge of fracturing along religious fault lines. Ethnic and religious minorities in northern Nigeria face systemic and systematic discrimination. Muslims and Christians in northeastern Nigeria are profoundly and negatively impacted by the terrorist violence pursued by Boko Haram. Christians risk extinction in Nigeria’s northeast.

Congressman Wolf continues to be an advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves. In January 2015, he was appointed the first-ever Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at Baylor University. That same month he joined the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, a newly created religious freedom group, as Distinguished Senior Fellow.

He is the author of the International Religious Freedom Act, which infused America’s first freedom – religious freedom – into U.S. foreign policy by creating the International Religious Freedom Office at the State Department.