United States President Donald Trump has threatened that America could launch additional military strikes in Nigeria if what he characterises as persistent attacks on Christians continue, raising the spectre of expanded American military intervention in Africa’s most populous nation despite sustained pushback from Nigerian authorities and contradictory assessments from his own advisers.
Trump issued the warning during an interview with The New York Times published on Thursday, when asked whether the Christmas Day missile strikes against Islamic State terror group positions in Nigeria signalled the beginning of a broader military campaign. The strikes, which targeted insurgent strongholds in the country’s restive northeast, came roughly a month after the American president threatened to deploy US troops to Nigeria, vowing they would go in “guns-a-blazing to wipe out the terrorists killing our cherished Christians,” a characterisation that has fuelled diplomatic tensions between Washington and Abuja.
The inflammatory rhetoric has been accompanied by repeated claims from some American politicians and religious advocacy groups that Christians in Nigeria are being systematically targeted for genocide, assertions the Nigerian government has consistently and categorically rejected as factually inaccurate and politically motivated. Nigerian officials have maintained that the security challenges facing the country, while serious, do not constitute religious persecution but rather reflect complex conflicts driven by competition over resources, banditry, insurgency, and criminal enterprise that affect Nigerians of all religious backgrounds.
Nigeria retained control over decision-making surrounding the Christmas Day operation, according to Ademola Oshodi, Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Foreign Affairs and Protocol, a statement apparently designed to preserve Nigerian sovereignty and counter any impression that the strikes represented unilateral American military action on Nigerian soil. The careful delineation of authority suggests sensitivity in Abuja to domestic political concerns about foreign intervention and the potential erosion of national sovereignty.
Following the strikes, Trump indicated that further military action remained a possibility, a position he reiterated emphatically in the New York Times interview. “I’d love to make it a one-time strike,” the American president said. “But if they continue to kill Christians it will be a many-time strike.” The statement represents an explicit threat of ongoing American military involvement in Nigeria’s internal security challenges, a prospect that has alarmed sovereignty-conscious officials across the African continent and raised questions about the legal and strategic basis for such intervention.
The Nigerian government has consistently dismissed allegations that Christians are being deliberately targeted for systematic killing, arguing instead that violence in affected regions claims victims across religious lines and stems from multifaceted causes including farmer-herder resource conflicts, banditry, and extremist insurgency. Officials in Abuja have expressed frustration that international narratives often oversimplify Nigeria’s security landscape by casting it in purely religious terms, obscuring the economic, environmental, and governance dimensions that drive much of the violence.
In October, Trump’s senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos, offered an assessment that directly contradicted the religious targeting narrative his principal has promoted. Boulos stated that extremist groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province were killing more Muslims than Christians in Nigeria, an observation supported by independent research documenting that Muslim communities, particularly in northeastern states like Borno and Yobe, have borne a disproportionate share of casualties from insurgent violence over the past fifteen years.
When confronted with his adviser’s remarks during the New York Times interview, Trump appeared to acknowledge Muslim casualties while maintaining his focus on Christian victimisation. “I think that Muslims are being killed also in Nigeria,” the president responded. “But it’s mostly Christians.” The assertion contradicts available data on conflict casualties and reflects a persistent theme in Trump’s public statements on Nigeria, which have emphasised Christian suffering while giving limited attention to the broader patterns of violence documented by humanitarian organisations, academic researchers, and Nigerian security agencies.
The discrepancy between Trump’s characterisation and empirical evidence has raised concerns among analysts and former diplomats familiar with Nigeria’s security dynamics. Independent research organisations, including the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker, have documented that violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, often characterised internationally as Christian-Muslim conflict, more accurately reflects competition between farming and herding communities over land and water resources in an era of climate change, population pressure, and governance failure.
In northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province have waged a brutal insurgency since 2009, Muslim civilians have constituted the majority of casualties, according to data compiled by humanitarian organisations operating in the region. The insurgent groups, while periodically targeting Christians and other religious minorities, have primarily attacked Muslim communities perceived as insufficiently committed to their extremist ideology, as well as government institutions, security forces, and traditional authorities.
The Christmas Day strikes represented a significant development in American military engagement in Nigeria, marking what appeared to be the first direct US military action against militant targets within Nigerian territory in recent years. The United States has maintained a military presence in West Africa focused on training, intelligence sharing, and logistical support for counter-terrorism operations, but direct kinetic action has been relatively rare and typically conducted in close coordination with host nation governments.
Details of the Christmas Day operation remain limited, with neither American nor Nigerian authorities providing comprehensive public accounts of the targets struck, the number of militants killed or wounded, or the specific intelligence that prompted the action. The opacity surrounding the operation has fuelled speculation about the extent of American military involvement in Nigeria and whether additional strikes might occur without extensive public disclosure or parliamentary oversight.
Trump’s threat of expanded military action raises complex legal and diplomatic questions. International law generally prohibits military intervention in sovereign states absent self-defence, Security Council authorisation, or host nation consent. While Nigerian cooperation with the Christmas Day strikes appears to have provided a legal basis for that operation, Trump’s suggestion of ongoing or expanded strikes contingent on his assessment of attacks on Christians implies a unilateral American decision-making process that could conflict with principles of sovereignty and non-intervention enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
Nigerian officials have not publicly responded to Trump’s latest threats, maintaining a diplomatic posture that balances cooperation with the United States on genuine security challenges against resistance to narratives perceived as undermining Nigerian sovereignty or misrepresenting the country’s internal dynamics. Behind closed doors, however, sources familiar with discussions in Abuja suggest growing unease about American rhetoric and the potential for military actions that Nigerian authorities have not requested or approved.
The Nigerian government has made significant investments in counter-insurgency operations over the past decade, deploying tens of thousands of troops to the northeast and implementing civilian protection programmes in affected communities. While these efforts have yielded mixed results and serious human rights concerns have been raised about military conduct, Nigerian officials argue that characterising the situation as genocide or religious persecution undermines their legitimacy and oversimplifies challenges that require nuanced, locally-led solutions.
Christian leaders within Nigeria have themselves offered diverse perspectives on the security situation. While some church figures, particularly those with international connections, have adopted the genocide framework promoted by certain American advocacy groups, others have cautioned against religious polarisation and emphasised the need for inter-faith dialogue, economic development, and accountable governance as foundations for sustainable peace.
The Most Reverend Matthew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto and one of Nigeria’s most prominent religious voices, has argued that while Christians do face violence in certain contexts, framing Nigeria’s security challenges primarily through a religious lens risks exacerbating tensions and obscuring solutions. Muslim leaders have similarly emphasised that insurgent groups pose threats to all Nigerians regardless of faith and that sustainable security requires addressing governance failures, corruption, and inequality rather than simply deploying military force.
Trump’s approach to Nigeria reflects broader patterns in his foreign policy, which has often prioritised religious freedom concerns and portrayed American military power as a tool for protecting Christian minorities abroad. The administration has designated several countries as particularly egregious violators of religious freedom and has promoted religious liberty as a central pillar of American diplomacy, though critics argue this focus has sometimes been applied selectively and has not always advanced the interests of the communities it purports to protect.
The threat of expanded military strikes also raises questions about American strategic priorities in Africa and the allocation of limited military resources. The United States military has faced difficult decisions about its footprint on the continent following a reassessment of counter-terrorism priorities and growing concerns about great power competition with China and Russia. Some defence analysts have questioned whether expanded military involvement in Nigeria, absent clear strategic objectives and with uncertain host nation support, represents an effective use of American capabilities.
