President Donald Trump’s November 1 Truth Social post, which directed the U.S. Department of War to prepare to invade Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” because its government has failed to protect Christians from terrorist attacks, has elicited reactions ranging from outrage to robust support.
Some have also responded to the U.S. State Department’s decision the prior day to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern for violations of religious freedom. The Trump administration gave the same designation to Nigeria in 2020, but the status was lifted by President Joe Biden the next year.
Thirteen countries, including international pariahs Iran and North Korea, as well as China and Russia, are designated as CPCs. The designation is technically symbolic, but consequences can include diplomatic sanctions and action by the U.S. government to block loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
‘Unrelenting Massacre’
The extent of violence in Northern and Central Nigeria is not in dispute. A May 2025 report from Amnesty International said that 10,215 people have been killed by armed bandits and 672 villages sacked in the two years since President Bola Tinubu assumed power. Over 90 percent of the deaths were in Benue and Plateau States. Amnesty also estimates that 450,000 people have been internally displaced.
The “World Watch List 2025” of the Christian advocacy group Open Doors claimed that about 70 percent of the Christians killed around the world for their faith between October 2023 and September 2024—3,100 of 4,476—were Nigerians.
Dr. Ambrose Igboke, a public affairs commentator, said he wasn’t surprised by the designation. “The sheer numbers of deaths of Christians in Nigeria in the past 16 years, the deliberate and systematic patterns, and the unrelenting massacre scream blood and genocide in the strictest sense of the meaning of genocide.”
He added: “We can pretend to be delusional, political or even in denial, but statistics tell the story. No Nigerian citizen, whether Christian or Muslim or Animist, should be allowed to be killed by terrorists while [governments] keep issuing press releases, condolences, and using pet names for terrorists—‘bandits,’ ‘insurgents,’ and the most callous, ‘farmers-herders clash.’”
‘Blow the Trumpet on Evil’
The Rev. Dr. Sylvanus Ukajia, national publicity secretary of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, was one of very few prominent Christian leaders in the country to speak in support of Trump.
“Communities have been targeted in unabated mass killings in Benue, Plateau and Taraba, Bornu, Southern Kaduna, and other parts of Nigeria. The Christian Association of Nigeria has put out statistics online that all of us are aware,” he said.
“As the Lord has stirred up President Trump to blow the trumpet on this evil, we join peace loving and right-thinking Nigerians to call on the [federal government] to put an end to this genocide.”
Archbishop Henry Ndukuba, the Church of Nigeria’s primate, assured his fellow Nigerians that “God has not forgotten the country amidst its escalating socioeconomic hardship and security challenges.” Speaking on the sidelines of the church’s annual Divine Commonwealth Conference, he added, “Nigeria will not continue like this. God will remember us and will turn things around.”
‘Terrorists Are Not Part of Us’
Muslim organizations were quick to distinguish Nigerian Muslims more generally from the “Islamic terrorists” blamed by President Trump for the killings.
The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, the nation’s most important Islamic body, denounced the president’s statement, claiming at a November 8 press conference that the U.S. government had been misled by “Islamophobic and unpatriotic Nigerians,” and that violence is being directed at both Muslims and Christians because of economic pressures and poor internal security.
“We affirm that there is no Christian genocide in Nigeria. There is no Muslim genocide in Nigeria. What we face is poverty, climate change, bad governance, and crime. Nigeria’s unity will not be broken by lies,” the council said.
Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), a more moderate Nigerian Islamic human rights organization, stated: “Terrorists are not part of us. Their methods stand in contradistinction to the tenets of Islam.
“A U.S. strike will make sense if they are directed at terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, ISIS, and ISWAP who have been killing both Muslims and Christians. Trump and U.S. will be hailed if this is the objective.
“But such strikes will be considered aggression and a resumption of the Christian crusade of the 19th century if innocent Muslims and mosques are targeted or if Muslim leaders are attacked or become victims of rendition and the attendant waterboarding,” MURIC warned.
But Sa’adiyya Adebisis-Hassan, a prominent young Nigerian commentator, pushed back in “To My Fellow Muslims,” a statement widely circulated on social media:
Let’s stop twisting facts: who are the killers?
Are they Christians? No.
Are they Jews? No.
Are they Buddhists? No.
They are Jihadist extremists who hide under the name of Islam to slaughter both Christians and Muslims who disagree with their madness.
So when Christians cry out that they are being massacred because of their faith, let’s stop rushing to say, “Muslims are victims too.” That’s not the point. Christians are being targeted in the name of religion. Muslims are being killed for refusing to join in the madness. Both are victims but the ideology behind the killing wears a Jihadist face, not a Christian one.
No Christian has ever killed a Muslim in this country in the name of Jesus. … But how many times have we seen mobs shouting “Allahu Akbar” while burning churches and murdering innocent people? From Borno to Jos Plateau, from Kaduna to Yola these things happened, and we all know it …
That’s why the world no longer takes our defense seriously. We can’t claim to be victims while defending the monsters among us.
Until Muslims in Nigeria openly condemn and fight Jihadists with the same energy they defend Islam, this bloodshed will never end. Every time you justify or stay silent, you’re empowering those who destroy our image and faith.
‘Not a Government, an Accomplice’
Other commentators focused on Trump’s accusation that “the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians.”
Comrade Timi Frank, the former deputy national publicity secretary of the ruling All People’s Congress party, said Trump’s statement showed that “he cares more about the welfare and safety of ordinary Nigerians than those elected to lead them.”
“The truth is that this administration is not interested in ending the killings. Insecurity has become a business for some within the system,” Frank alleged.
He also called on the U.S. government to focus its punitive action on individuals complicit in the attacks instead of the Nigerian people as a whole.
Adebisis-Hassan decried the federal government’s decades-old policy of granting amnesty to “repentant” militants who surrender their weapons, alleging ulterior motives.
“Our leaders are busy playing politics over corpses. Show me a country that gives amnesty to terrorists who massacre its citizens, and I will show you a nation led by men without souls.
“Nigeria doesn’t rehabilitate victims; it rehabilitates killers. It doesn’t comfort widows; it empowers warlords. Our politicians care more about 2027 elections than 2025 funerals. … A government that pampers killers and punishes victims is not a government; it’s an accomplice,” she said.
Nigeria’s Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, told The Guardian that Christians were not being targeted, describing Nigeria as “a multi-religious nation united against terrorism, banditry, and extremism.”
“We are not denying or asking for denial of Nigeria’s security challenges—which we, under President Tinubu’s leadership, are dealing with boldly and decisively.”
“Instead, we ask to be fully understood and respected as a multi-religious country that is united against all forms of insecurity.”
K.C. Nwajei is a freelance journalist based in Nigeria.
