US President Donald Trump doubled down on his assaults on Nigeria on Friday, accusing the nation of failing to guard Christians, and utilizing the time period “genocide” for the primary time to explain the violence in Africa’s most populous nation.
“I believe Nigeria is a shame. The entire thing is a shame,” the American president mentioned on Fox Information Radio’s The Brian Kilmeade Present. “They’re killing folks by the 1000’s. It’s a genocide. And I’m actually offended about it.”
Earlier, Mr Trump threatened to take navy motion in Nigeria if its leaders didn’t take pressing and deliberate steps to halt the killings of Christians by non-state actors.
These murders, he claimed, have reached genocidal proportions. He doubled down on this false declare with an unprovoked denigration of the nation on Friday.
“And we pay, you already know, we give a variety of subsidy to Nigeria, which we’re going to finish up stopping.
“The federal government’s performed nothing. They’re very ineffective. They’re killing Christians at will. And you already know, till I received concerned in it two weeks in the past — no one even talked about it.”
Mr Trump re-designated Nigeria as a Nation of Explicit Concern (CPC) over the allegation of persecution of Christians. Nigeria is among the 13 nations that the US has positioned on that pariah checklist. Mr Trump had included the oil-rich nation in the identical class throughout his first time period in workplace in 2020, however his successor, Joe Biden, delisted it in 2021.
In keeping with Mr Trump, “If the Nigerian Authorities continues to permit the killing of Christians, the USA could very properly go into that now disgraced nation, guns-a-blazing, to utterly wipe out the Islamic terrorists who’re committing these horrible atrocities.”
He additional declared that the navy motion can be “quick, vicious and candy.” In consequence, he claimed to have ordered his Division of Conflict to organize for the assault.
In response to Mr Trump’s rhetorics, President Bola Tinubu mentioned Nigeria would proceed to have interaction the US diplomatically and welcome help to defeat terrorism.
PREMIUM TIMES reported that Nigeria’s Nationwide Safety Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, and prime authorities officers met with US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on the Pentagon on Friday to debate the allegations of Christian genocide.
How true is the declare of Christian genocide in Nigeria
Nigeria faces completely different types of insecurity with numerous armed teams working in several components of the nation. The teams, with completely different motives, kill and kidnap 1000’s of individuals throughout the nation.
On Friday, gunmen kidnapped over 200 college students from a Catholic faculty in central Nigeria. Earlier than then, on Monday, kidnappers took about 25 Muslim college students from a college within the northwestern a part of the nation. Rescue efforts are underway, however the destiny of the kidnapped college students just isn’t recognized.
Armed violence in Nigeria manifests in several however overlapping varieties, pushed by a mixture of historic grievances, ethnic tensions, financial disparities, non secular extremism, local weather change, and weak governance. A single narrative can’t precisely seize this example, in line with a PREMIUM TIMES evaluation of the safety scenario.
Whereas the North-east area faces rebel assaults from Boko Haram and different Jihadi teams who search to eradicate Western training and civilisation, the North-west struggles with armed banditry.
The North-central area offers with frequent communal, ethno-religious, and farmer-herder conflicts, the South-east faces agitations by separatists, and the South-south battles with militancy. Not one of the main sects has solely focused Christians as a part of an organised, systematic effort to eradicate them, as Mr Cruz and different People have claimed.
Safety analysts and researchers additionally say the declare of a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria is fake and deceptive. They argue that it displays a deep misreading of Nigeria’s safety realities and exposes the undercurrents of a clearly mischievous agenda.
The Nigerian authorities has repeatedly rejected the allegations, describing them as “a gross misrepresentation of actuality.” Officers argue that terrorists “assault all who reject their murderous ideology — Muslims, Christians, and people of no religion alike
Credible media stories, together with one by the BBC, have discovered that a lot of the information used to help the genocide claims can’t be independently verified.
The New York Instances reported on Friday that there is no such thing as a clear proof to recommend Christians are attacked any extra steadily than Muslims.
“Opposite to Mr Trump’s declare of a genocide, there are several types of violence occurring throughout the nation, with no one-size-fits-all clarification. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, with, by some estimates, greater than 230 million folks. It’s geographically large and ethnically numerous, with over 300 languages spoken.”
“Even inside a single area, attributing the violence to a single group or motivation is hard,” the New York Instances stories.
PREMIUM TIMES editorial additionally dismissed the genocide narrative as “false and deceptive,” provided that there is no such thing as a official mastermind of such impunity.
“But, we acknowledged the fact of killings affecting each Christians and Muslims, perpetrated by non-state actors. This context exposes Washington’s gross misrepresentation of the information of Nigeria’s safety scenario and betrays the underbelly of a clearly mischievous agenda,” the editorial learn.
Information from the Armed Battle Location & Occasion Information (ACLED) mission, which makes use of verifiable sources, presents a special image from the one utilized by Mr Trump.
ACLED estimates that just below 53,000 civilians of all faiths have been killed in focused political violence since 2009. Between 2020 and September 2025, about 21,000 civilians had been killed in abductions, assaults, sexual violence and bombings.
ACLED recognized 384 incidents the place Christians had been particularly focused, resulting in 317 deaths, and 417 Muslims had been killed in related focused assaults.
On Thursday, the Director of the Africa Program on the Centre for Strategic and Worldwide Research, Oge Onubogu, warned that US navy intervention would worsen Nigeria’s fractures.
READ ALSO: Nigeria’s overseas affairs minister counters Trump’s allegations of Christian genocide
“If the Trump administration proceeds with unilateral navy motion in Nigeria, it might endanger the Christians it goals to guard and worsen divisions alongside non secular strains, she instructed the American Congress, including, the US–Nigeria engagement should be “from a spot of honesty” and Nigerians should “acknowledge one thing should be performed rapidly concerning the ranges of insecurity.”
Ms Onubogu cautioned towards a “slender narrative that reduces Nigeria’s safety scenario to a single story.”
