Trump Threatens Military Intervention Over Alleged Christian Killings in Nigeria: Tensions Rise Between US and Nigerian Leadership

Nigeria's administration firmly refutes allegations that Christians are specifically targeted in the nation's ongoing conflicts.

United States President Donald Trump has reiterated his warning about potential military action in Nigeria concerning the killings of Christians, suggesting that such intervention could take the form of either ground forces or aerial strikes.

While narratives about Christian "persecution" in Africa's most populated country have gained momentum among right-wing circles in the US and Europe, specialists indicate that Nigeria's complex conflicts claim victims from both Christian and Muslim communities indiscriminately.

Trump's statements followed the Nigerian presidency's suggestion for a meeting between the two heads of state to address the issue comprehensively.

When an AFP journalist aboard Air Force One inquired whether Trump was contemplating deploying US troops to Nigerian soil or conducting air strikes, he responded: "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 declared on Sunday.

Nigerian authorities consistently maintain that Christians are not specifically targeted in these violent incidents.

In a provocative message on his Truth Social platform Saturday, Trump claimed he had requested the Pentagon to develop a potential attack plan for Nigeria, just one day after warning that Christianity was facing an "existential threat" in the West African nation.

Within his post, Trump asserted that if Nigeria fails to curb the killings, the United States would intervene militarily and "it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians."

Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's spokesman, Daniel Bwala, informed AFP on Sunday that "Nigeria is the US's partner in the global fight against terrorism. When leaders meet, there would be better outcomes."

"Nigeria welcomes US support to fight terrorism as long as it respects our territorial integrity," he stated.

"We know that Donald Trump has his own style of communication," he noted, suggesting the post might be a tactic to "force a sit-down between the two leaders so they can iron out a common front to fight their insecurity."

Previously, Bwala had indicated on X that the two leaders might meet in the near future.

"As for the differences as to whether terrorists in Nigeria target only Christians or, in fact, all faiths and no faiths, the differences, if they exist, would be discussed and resolved by the two leaders when they meet in the coming days, either in State House or White House."

Bwala, speaking via telephone from Washington, declined to provide details regarding any potential meeting.

Trump posted on Friday, without providing evidence, that "thousands of Christians are being killed (and) Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter."

Nigeria confronts jihadist conflict in its northeastern region, criminal "bandit" gangs in the northwest, and deadly farmer-herder conflicts in its central states.

"Christians are being killed, we can't deny the fact that Muslims are (also) being killed," stated Danjuma Dickson Auta, a 56-year-old Christian community leader in Nigeria's Plateau state.

This central state has endured years of deadly clashes between predominantly Christian farmers and Muslim herders competing for diminishing land resources, as well as attacks from armed criminal elements.

Speaking from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state—the epicenter of Islamist militancy in Nigeria—Abubakar Gamandi, a Muslim who leads a fishermen's union, told AFP that "even those who sold this narrative of Christian genocide know it is not true".

Jihadists "kill both Muslims and Christians. They have killed far more Muslims than Christians because 95 per cent of the population of the areas" affected by militant activities in the state are predominantly Muslim, he explained to AFP.

"The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality," President Tinubu declared on social media Saturday.