Nigeria, in Trump's sights over the killings of Christians
Nor are there many Western countries that staunchly defend their values. Very often, indifference, if not outright hostility towards the tragedies suffered by Christians, sometimes even in their own developed countries, are the most common reactions.
Given this context, it has come as a huge surprise that the President of the United States himself, Donald Trump, has threatened Nigeria with military intervention if the systematic killing of Christians by ‘radical Islamists’ in Africa's most populous country continues. In his characteristic brutal language, Trump wrote on his own network, Truth Social, that ‘the United States could now enter that disgraceful country with gunfire to completely eradicate the Islamic terrorists who are perpetrating these terrible atrocities’.
To reaffirm his full willingness to carry out his threat, Trump emphasised that he had ‘ordered our War Department (the new official name for the Department of Defence) to prepare for intervention,’ adding that ‘if we attack, it will be in a swift, violent and decisive manner, just like the attacks carried out by terrorist thugs against our beloved Christians.’
The wording of this message indicates that Trump has read the latest reports from various organisations, which have been passed on to him by some members of Congress from his Republican Party. He has undoubtedly seen the conclusions of the report produced by the NGO International Society for Civil Liberty and the Rule of Law Intersociety, which claims that more than 20,000 Christians have been massacred in south-eastern Nigeria since 2015. The report asserts that the killings were perpetrated by various jihadist organisations as well as by the Nigerian army deployed in the area, which it directly blames for almost half of the deaths.
This organisation, founded by lawyer Emeka Umeagbalasi, a member of the Igbo ethnic group, follows the model of Peter Benenson, the Catholic convert who founded Amnesty International during the Cold War. Also according to its report, in the first 220 days of 2025, 7,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria. In a broader accounting, specifically since 2009, the year in which Boko Haram, affiliated with al-Qaeda, began its terrorist activities in both Nigeria and its neighbouring regions in the Sahel, more than 12 million people have been displaced and 189,000 civilians killed, including 125,000 Christians.
In May of this year, at a meeting of Christian leaders in Nairobi, Joshua Williams, director for Africa of the NGO Open Doors, reported that in the last twenty years, 19,000 churches and chapels had been attacked and totally or partially destroyed on the African continent, 15,000 of which were located in Nigeria. This Protestant-inspired organisation also reported that in 2024 alone, more than 4,500 Christians were killed ‘for their faith’ in twelve countries in the Sahel, 114,000 were forced to flee, 16,000 homes were destroyed and 1,700 churches were damaged.
With all this data, President Donald Trump has designated Nigeria as a ‘country of particular concern,’ claiming that its Christian population is under existential threat and directly blaming radical Islamists for this. ‘The United States cannot remain impassive in the face of these atrocities being committed in Nigeria and many other countries,’ he added.
The impact of his harsh warnings on the Nigerian capital is demonstrated by the reaction of the country's president, Bola Tinubu, who expressed his willingness to ‘deepen understanding and cooperation for the protection of all communities and religions’. Having been declared a country of particular concern, Nigeria is liable to be subject to international sanctions, reduced military aid and a travel ban on Nigerian public officials considered responsible for the massacres.
Without denying the existence of the killings and other violations, publications such as Afrique XXI.Info question the accuracy of the figures mentioned in the reports. One of its analysts, Marc-Antoine Pérousse de Montclos, a specialist in violence in Africa, warns of the impossibility of accurately distinguishing the victims and grouping them according to their faith, banditry or ethnic clashes. This is especially true when, according to the aforementioned specialist, ‘there are no reliable police records or official statistics in Nigeria’.
In any case, and at least for a few days, the unquestionable tragedy suffered by Christian communities in many parts of the world has deserved the attention of the man considered the most powerful in the world, and consequently of those who shrugged their shoulders in Western societies, steeped in ‘woke’ relativism towards the Christian beliefs and values of their own civilisation.