President Donald Trump threatened possible US military action against Islamist militants in Nigeria if the country’s government doesn’t halt the groups’ “killing of Christians.”
In a post Saturday on Truth Social, Trump said he’s instructing the Pentagon “to prepare for possible action” and threatened an immediate cutoff in aid to Nigeria, an OPEC member and Africa’s most populous country.
Trump said on Friday he was designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern because of worries about the safety of Christians in the country. Republican Senator Ted Cruz has been pushing for Congress to designate Nigeria a violator of religious freedom.
Total US aid to Nigeria was $1 billion in 2023, the last year for which full data is available, under former President Joe Biden. For 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term, partial data shows that Nigeria so far has received about $250 million — a significant drop.
Under Trump, the US has implemented a 15% tariff on most goods imported from Nigeria, affecting $400 million in trade.
Nigeria was also one of the nations that refused to accept Venezuelan deportees from the US, with foreign affairs minister Yusuf Tuggar saying, “We have enough problems of our own.” That triggered non-immigrant visa restrictions on Nigerians seeking to visit the US.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu rejected Trump’s characterization of the country as religiously intolerant in a lengthy post on social media platform X. The US president is disregarding “the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians,” Tinubu said on the social media site.
Tinubu has been under pressure this year from a rising Islamist insurgency in northeastern Nigeria, including attacks on dozens of fortified army bases. Nigeria’s roughly 230 million people are split between Christians and Muslims, and attacks have targeted both communities.
The militants, who emerged from the insurgency known as Boko Haram, have waged bombings, kidnappings and raids on towns and villages since 2009, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and disrupting daily life.
High-profile incidents, such as the 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, have drawn international attention to the humanitarian crisis the insurgency has created. The extremist group has also used women and girls as suicide bombers, heightening the climate of fear.
In April, Tinubu said at least 40 people were killed when Muslim gunmen attacked a Christian farming community.
“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump said on Saturday.
Any US attack would be “fast, vicious, and sweet,” he said.
Sign up here for the twice-weekly Next Africa newsletter, and subscribe to the Next Africa podcast on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen.
