Over the past year, the situation in Nigeria has gradually made its way onto the agenda of the American right-wing media. The topic has spread even to relatively liberal spaces, and in recent weeks it has become official government policy, writes the American publication "Foreign Policy", after on October 31, US President Donald Trump instructed his cabinet to make plans for military intervention in the country, if necessary.
The reason cited by Trump was "the inability of the Nigerian government to protect the Christian population" in the country from attacks by bandits, terrorists and other structures that threaten its security.
What is the situation
Nigeria is the largest democratic country in Africa. It is multiethnic and multireligious, with the north predominantly Muslim and the south predominantly Christian. But the division is not black and white. The middle belt, often described as part of the north, has a number of non-Muslim residents, while in the south Christians and Muslims live side by side. For the most part, the different religious communities coexist peacefully, but the country has been battling the militant Muslim insurgent group Boko Haram for more than a decade. Boko Haram has been active in Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Mali since around 2002, but has also carried out a number of insurgent attacks in northern Nigeria. Tensions between Muslims and Christians exist elsewhere in Nigeria, but these problems are more likely to be explained by the usual political divisions that have plagued the country since independence, the publication notes.
The presence of oil in the Niger Delta, which forms the bulk of Nigeria's export earnings, is also a factor in many of these problems. Another driver is the hunger and political corruption that characterize much of Nigerian public life.
How Nigeria's problems ended up on Trump's desk
The White House's interest in this topic did not come out of nowhere. For months, activists and politicians in Washington have claimed that Islamist militants are systematically attacking Christians in Nigeria, although their claims are not based on data that can be easily verified, writes the BBC.
Back in September, popular TV host and comedian Bill Marr said on his show that what is happening in Nigeria is "genocide", claiming that "Boko Haram" has "killed more than 100,000 people since 2009 and burned down 18,000 churches". Similar figures are also gaining popularity on social networks.
One of the leaders of the Republicans in the US Senate, Ted Cruz, has launched a campaign on the topic. On October 7, he wrote in "Ex" that "since 2009, over 50,000 Christians in Nigeria have been killed, and over 18,000 churches and 2,000 Christian schools have been destroyed". Cruz accused Nigerian authorities of "ignoring and even facilitating the mass killing of Christians by Islamist jihadists".
In his October 31 message, President Trump, echoing these words, described Nigeria as a "disgraceful country", saying that the government "continues to allow the killing of Christians".
The government in Abuja rejected these allegations, describing them as "a gross distortion of reality".
As for the source of the data, in a podcast in September Cruz directly referred to a 2023 report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (InterSociety), a non-governmental organization that monitors and tracks human rights violations in Nigeria.
However, InterSociety does not share a detailed list of sources, making it difficult to verify the general The number of deaths it reports, the BBC notes. The organization cites a list of 70 media reports as part of the sources for its findings on attacks on Christians in 2025. But about half of the original news reports do not mention the religious identity of the victims, the British public broadcaster said.
Pentagon plans
In a November 5 report, the American newspaper "New York Times", citing its own sources, reported that the US military is drawing up plans for Nigeria.
The article specifies that an Iraq- or Afghanistan-style campaign is not currently being seriously considered. However, there are some steps that US military planners could take, but they would have limited impact on the insurgent fighters in Nigeria, the newspaper notes.
According to officials quoted by the "New York Times", the US Air Force could carry out airstrikes on little-known compounds in northern Nigeria inhabited by militant groups. American drones could attack reconnaissance vehicles and even convoys. U.S. forces could join forces with Nigerian soldiers to launch attacks on villages and root out insurgents who have taken up residence in rural areas in the north of the country. All of these scenarios were among the options that U.S. Africa Command officials prepared this week to present to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. But any major U.S. military operation would likely fail, current and former military officials told the publication. “It would be a fiasco,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a retired Iraq War veteran. "The American public has little interest in repeating the Iraq or Afghanistan-style military campaigns in Nigeria," he said.
Any potential attempt by Trump to direct the military to attack Nigerian insurgents through his preferred method of airstrikes would likely elicit shock and awe, but not much more, military officials said. General Paul Eaton likened such efforts to "smashing a pillow."
Nigerian Reactions
On November 4, Nigeria's Foreign Minister Yusuf Tugar was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying that the country's constitution does not tolerate religious persecution.
"We are guided by what our constitution says on the issue of religious freedom, and it states that no religious persecution can be supported in any way by federal, regional or local authorities - "This is impossible," Tugar said during a visit to Germany.
Meanwhile, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported a meeting between President Bola Tinubu and the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Ignatius Kaigama. Tinubu and Kaigama held closed-door talks. While details of the meeting were not released, the discussions are believed to have focused on strengthening interfaith harmony, the agency noted.
The traditional ruler of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, strongly criticized the US president for his statements. Akiolu described Trump's comments as incorrect and creating unnecessary tension, saying they could misrepresent the realities in Nigeria and paint the country in a wrong light.
In domestic politics, the mood was tense even before Donald Trump's threats. About a week ago, the Nigerian president fired and replaced all of his army chiefs on suspicion of a failed coup attempt, surprising the country. There has not been a coup in Nigeria since the end of military rule in 1999, Foreign Policy recalls. The Nigerian government itself has a lot of work to do to regain the trust of its citizens. The alienation that so many groups feel as a result of years of neglect, corruption, and sometimes outright victimization is real and deep. Allowing the violence to fester can only lead to greater fragmentation, the publication summarizes.