In July 2025, Genocide Watch reported that Nigeria was continuing to grapple with a “genocidal crisis” in which Islamists and jihadists of the Fulani ethnic group were targeting Christians and moderate Muslims in the Northeast, Northwest, and Middle Belt regions of the country.
In August 2025, Intersociety, an African non-governmental organization that documents human rights violations, reported that 7,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria in the first seven months of the year. Thus, one of Nigeria’s domestic conflicts promptly became red meat to President Trump and his base of Conservatives and Christian Trumpists.
In September 2025, Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) introduced a bill to protect Christians from persecution by Islamist groups in Nigeria and to hold to account Nigerian government officials who enable these Islamist groups. By October 2025, Sen. Cruz claimed that since 2009, Islamist Jihadists had “massacred” over 50,000 Christians and that Nigerian government officials had created the environment that facilitated these killings. Similarly, on October 6, 2025, Congressman Riley M. Moore (R., WV-02) urged the U.S. government to “take immediate action” against what he called the “systematic persecution and slaughter of Christians” in Nigeria.
Rep. Moore got his wish on October 31, when President Trump declared Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern because Christians there were facing an existential threat, and thousands of them were being killed by radical Islamists.
President Trump upped the ante a few days later when he declared on November 1 that the US would “immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria” (which he called a “disgraced country”) and that the US may well “go into” the country “guns-a-blazing” to wipe out the Islamic terrorists. Towards this end, he instructed the Department of War to prepare for a possible “fast, vicious, and sweet” attack on Nigeria. Needless to say, the Nigerian government vehemently refuted allegations of genocide against Christians in the country.
Nigeria, like former colonies of Western countries, has many birth defects, including ethnic and religious tensions. This led to a brutal three-year civil war when the southeastern part of the country, mainly populated by the Igbo ethnic group, attempted to secede. Although the Civil War ended in 1970 with Nigeria’s integrity intact, it left the country awash in guns. This, coupled with the so-called “oil boom” of the ‘70s, increased crime, especially armed robbery, which the government attempted to stamp out by holding public executions of armed robbers.
Over the past 55 years since the end of the Nigerian Civil War, the country has endured various conflicts because of separatist movements in the East and the oil-rich Niger Delta, the Islamist insurgency in the Northeast of the country started by Boko Haram in 2009, and conflicts between livestock owners and farmers in the Middle Belt of the country (located between the predominantly Muslim North and the predominantly Christian South and East of the country).
These conflicts have, ironically, been fueled in no small part by the US Global War on Terror and the increased flow of small arms into the West African Sahel following the US-supported overthrow of former Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi in 2011.
Insecurity in the country has also been rooted in and exacerbated by corruption, poverty, climate change, religious fanaticism, governance failures, and organized criminality, to name a few factors. Contrary to what President Trump and his supporters are saying, there is no evidence of a deliberate policy of the Nigerian government to wage a genocide against Christians.
Despite these challenges, Nigeria is both an extremely important country in Africa (West Africa especially) and an important ally and trading partner of the US. Nigeria is the largest economy and, with over 200 million people, has the largest population in Africa. Nigeria is also a stabilizing force in West Africa (having helped end civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone), and its gross domestic product is greater than the combined GDP of the 14 other member states of ECOWAS, the regional economic community it helped found and which is headquartered in the country. Globally, Nigeria has provided over 200 thousand troops and spent over $10 billion in over 40 peacekeeping missions between 1960 and 2010.
Nigeria is the second-largest US trading partner in Sub-Saharan Africa and the fifth-largest exporter of oil and gas products to the US. Bilateral trade between the two countries reached about $13 billion in 2024, with the US enjoying a modest trade surplus. In addition, Nigeria has been a key ally of the US in promoting peace, democracy, and stability in Africa and has aligned with US counterterrorism efforts, especially with regard to fighting transnational terrorist threats, thus benefiting US strategic interests.
The US, on its part, has supported Nigeria in diplomatic, political, economic, and security spheres. Thus, the US has supported Nigeria’s regional leadership role and endorses Nigeria’s role in mediating conflicts in West Africa. The US also supports efforts to strengthen democratic governance, electoral transparency, and the rule of law in Nigeria, and Nigeria was the largest beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) facility, which enabled African countries to export some products duty-free to the US. In addition, the US government between 2015 and 2024 provided over $7.8 billion in aid to Nigeria.
Against this background, President Trump’s December 25, 2025, attack on what he termed Islamic terrorists was ill-advised. Although the strike had a token military impact, it helps the Islamists’ propaganda that they are fighting US and Western infidels. To make matters worse, Trump has threatened to launch more attacks on Nigeria if the killings of Christians continue. President Trump should know that the hypocrisy of this threat from someone who has funded, armed, and defended Israel’s genocide against Palestinians is not lost on millions of people around the world.
Trump’s attack on the Islamist groups in Nigeria fans the flames of hatred and insecurity in Nigeria, could destabilize the country, and bring even more strife to West Africa. This doesn’t have to be because there are better ways to help Nigeria deal with its insecurity than belligerency and military strikes.
President Trump should draw inspiration from President Nixon, who, at the urging of then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, supported the Nigerian government during the Civil War and insisted that the country must be kept united. At the same time, President Nixon’s administration was keenly aware of the humanitarian cost of the Civil War and supported the delivery of sorely needed food aid to avert famine in war-torn separatist Biafra. The important lesson here is not one of blind support for the Nigerian government, but of the need for pragmatic engagement anchored in the promotion of sustainable peace and stability in Nigeria.
President Trump should thus, through the various US-Nigeria bilateral and other diplomatic channels, engage Nigeria to help develop a strategy for ending the strife and insecurity that Nigerians (including both Christians and Muslims) are enduring. One important channel in this regard is the US-Nigeria Binational Commission (BNC), which, in its 6th meeting in 2024, identified various global and bilateral issues on which US-Nigeria cooperation can advance mutual interests in human development, prosperity, and security.
President Trump should also build on the visit of Nigerian government officials to the US and that of a US Congressional delegation to Nigeria to promote dialogue on helping provide security for all Nigerians.
Such constructive engagements, instead of fanning the flames of conflict in Nigeria, would be the most sensible thing for President Trump to do because too much is at stake for the US, Nigeria, and indeed the rest of the world.
Furthermore, peace-loving people the world over would not forgive Trump and the US if he continues to bomb and kill people just because he feels like it and can. Sooner or later Americans, too, will pay the price for such recklessness and hubris.