Nigeria dismisses Trump's claims of Christian genocide

A social media post and subsequent threats by US President Donald Trump to use military force against Nigeria's Islamic militants, whom he accuses of killing Christians, has sparked a diplomatic storm, writes Legalbrief. BBC News reports that Trump has ordered the military to prepare for action in Nigeria to tackle Islamist militant groups, while accusing the government of failing to protect Christians. Trump did not say which killings he was referring to, but claims of a genocide against Nigeria's Christians have been circulating in recent weeks and months in some right-wing US circles. Groups monitoring violence say there is no evidence to suggest that Christians are being killed more than Muslims in Nigeria, which is roughly evenly divided between followers of the two religions. An adviser to Nigeria's President, Daniel Bwala, said Nigeria would welcome US help in tackling the Islamist insurgents but noted that it was a ‘sovereign’ country. He also said the jihadists were not targeting members of a particular religion and that they had killed people from all faiths, or none.

Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu has insisted there is religious tolerance in the country and said the security challenges were affecting people ‘across faiths and regions’. Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday that he had instructed the US Department of War to prepare for ‘possible action'. He warned that he might send the military into Nigeria 'guns-a-blazing' unless the Nigerian Government intervened, and said that all aid to what he called 'the now disgraced country' would be cut. Trump added: ‘If we attack, it will be fast, vicious and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!’ US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth replied to the post by writing: ‘Yes sir. The Department of War is preparing for action. Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.’ Trump's threat has triggered alarm across Nigeria. Many on social media are urging the government to step up its fight against Islamist groups to avert a situation where foreign troops are sent into the country. But Bwala, who said he was a Christian pastor, told BBC News that Trump had a ‘unique way of communicating’ and that Nigeria was not taking his words literally. ‘We know the heart and intent of Trump is to help us fight insecurity,’ he said, adding that he hoped Trump would meet Tinubu in the coming days to discuss the issue.

Full BBC News report

Officials and experts in Nigeria on Sunday denied Trump’s claims of mass killings of Christians, noting that Boko Haram and al-Qaeda-linked groups target people of all faiths in Africa’s most populous country, reports Al Jazeera. But Trump – who has directed his government to prepare for possible ‘fast’ military action in in Nigeria – doubled down on the threat yesterday, saying he was considering a range of military options in Nigeria. When asked by a reporter if he was considering US troops on the ground in Nigeria or air strikes, Trump replied: ‘Could be, I mean, a lot of things – I envisage a lot of things.’ ‘They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen,’ he added. Nigeria, a country of more than 200m people, is divided between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south. Armed groups have been engaged in a conflict that has been largely confined to the northeast of the country, which is majority Muslim, and has dragged on for more than 15 years. Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, denied Trump’s claims of mass killings of Christians. ‘We are not proud of the security situation that we are passing through, but to go with the narrative that only Christians are targeted, no, it is not true. There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria’, he said.

Ebienfa said Nigeria was ready to work with its partners to ‘fight this scourge of terrorism, but not any passive action that will undermine the sovereignty of our country’. Trump’s threat of military action came a day after his administration added Nigeria back to a ‘Countries of Particular Concern’ list of nations that Washington says have violated religious freedoms. Tinubu, a Muslim from southern Nigeria who is married to a Christian pastor, on Saturday pushed back against accusations of religious intolerance and defended his country’s efforts to protect religious freedom. When making key government and military appointments, Tinubu, like his predecessors, has sought to strike a balance to make sure that Muslims and Christians are represented equally, according to Al Jazeera. Last week, Tinubu changed the country’s military leadership and appointed a Christian as the new defence chief. While human rights groups have urged the government to do more to address unrest in the country, which has experienced deadly attacks by Boko Haram and other armed groups, experts say claims of a ‘Christian genocide’ are false and simplistic.

Full Al Jazeera report

Phillip van Niekerk writes in a Daily Maverick opinion piece that a combination of ignorance and emotional manipulation resurfaced this weekend when Trump erupted on social media, threatening military invasion of Nigeria to stop a supposed genocide against Christians. ‘Two years ago, at a dinner in Washington for Africa “experts” to brief an incoming congressman on the continent, the newly elected legislator began his contribution by declaring that one of Africa’s most urgent crises was a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria. When asked to elaborate, he cited a single name – Nnamdi Kanu – as an example of a persecuted Christian languishing in prison. The table fell silent when someone gently explained that Kanu was not a pastor or missionary but a Biafran secessionist leader, jailed for fomenting rebellion and inciting violence, not for his faith.’ Van Niekerk, a managing partner of Calabar Consulting, a risk consulting company specialising in Africa, says that same combination of ignorance and emotional manipulation resurfaced this weekend when Trump threatened a ‘fast, vicious and sweet’ military invasion of Nigeria to stop a supposed genocide against Christians. ‘The statement was as dangerous as it was absurd. If Trump had paused to consult the US military, which has spent years partnering quietly with Nigerian forces against Boko Haram and other insurgents, he might have learned that Nigeria’s conflicts are real – but they are not religious wars.’ He points out that it is astonishing that the US spends billions of dollars annually on intelligence gathering, yet its political leaders can still be so profoundly misinformed about Africa’s most populous country. ‘Yes, Christians in parts of Nigeria have suffered horrific violence from extremists. But so too have Muslims, often in even greater numbers. In Borno, Yobe and Adamawa – the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency – most victims have been Muslim civilians murdered for rejecting the group’s nihilistic ideology.

Van Nikerk believes that Trump’s eruption is the culmination of a years long lobbying campaign in Washington by Biafran separatists, who have cleverly repackaged their secessionist grievance as a struggle to save ‘persecuted Christians’. ‘Since 2019, Biafran groups have declared more than a m i l l i o n dollars on lobbying in Washington, through Mercury Public Affairs, BW Global Group and Daniel Goldin. They have found a receptive audience among Christian nationalists in the US, who see Nigeria through the prism of their own culture wars. Senator Ted Cruz has floated legislation invoking religious persecution. Congressman Riley Moore has made it a personal crusade. Even the comedian Bill Maher got in on the act, scolding the media for ignoring it.’ He states in the DM piece that the strategy is familiar. 'It echoes the white genocide narrative promoted by far-right activists about South African Afrikaner farmers – a storyline that the Trump administration once enthusiastically adopted before quietly erasing it from the discourse. As with some Afrikaners, many Nigerian Igbos feel that they are the victims of discrimination, second-class citizens in a country that has never quite healed the wounds of the Biafran civil war of 1967 to 1970. In Washington, the campaign deploys the same emotional triggers: a grain of truth wrapped in distortion, amplified through the machinery of US grievance politics.'

'That grain of truth begins with the Boko Haram war, launched in 2009 in northeastern Nigeria, which has killed tens of thousands across faith lines. It extends to the Middle Belt, where Muslim and Christian farming communities have clashed violently, and to the recurring conflicts between Fulani herders and largely Christian agriculturalists. These are complex, overlapping crises – rooted in land scarcity, climate stress and state weakness – not a simple religious persecution. Much of the violence is simple banditry and criminality.’ Van Niekerk cautions in the DM piece that to reduce it to ‘Christian genocide’ is not just inaccurate. It’s dangerous. ‘Nigeria is far from perfect, and its government has often handled these conflicts clumsily or brutally. But it is also a country of extraordinary coexistence. The idea that Abuja is colluding in the persecution of Christians is as false as it is incendiary.’ Van Niekerk feels that if Trump truly cared about Nigerian lives, he might note that the Tinubu government has been fighting, not aiding, the extremists – often with US logistical and intelligence support. ‘The Pentagon, better than anyone, knows that a military intervention in Nigeria would not be swift or clean. It would be catastrophic, plunging West Africa’s fragile equilibrium into chaos at the very moment when Russian forces – now rebranded as the “Africa Corps” – are being pushed back in the Sahelian states, the epicentre of the Jihadist insurgencies.’ He concludes that stoking religious hysteria from afar risks achieving what Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa could not: turning Nigeria’s diversity into its undoing.

Full Daily Maverick analysis