U.S. President Donald Trump has said he will consider deploying US troops to Nigeria or carrying out air strikes to prevent what he called the killing of a large number of Christians in the West African Nation.
Trump made these comments late on Sunday evening as he arrived back in Washington after spending the weekend at his vacation home in Florida.
Asked if he envisioned a possible military deployment in Nigeria, Trump replied, “Could be. I mean, other things. I envisage a lot of things.
They’re killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria… They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen.”
Trump on Saturday threatened to take decisive military action against Nigeria if Africa’s most populous nation failed to protect the Christian population from the bandit attacks.
The US president’s warning comes after his administration added Nigeria back to a “Countries of Particular Concern” list of nations that the US believes have violated religious freedom.
Other nations on the list include China, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Pakistan.
Nigeria has a population of more than 200 million and is divided between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south.
Reacting to Trump’s comments, Kimebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, denied Trump’s baseless allegations of mass killings of Christians in the country.
“We are not proud of the security situation through which we are passing, but to go with the narrative that only Christians are targeted, “no, it is not true. There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria,” he said.
“We have acknowledged that killings have taken place in Nigeria, but those killings were not restricted to Christians, as Trump claims.
Muslims are being killed. Traditional worshippers are being killed… The majority of victims are not from the Christian population,” he said.
While contradictory claims are being put forward by both sides, there is no doubt that terrorists, bandits, and militia gangs have killed thousands of people in Nigeria since 2023.
