Washington (AFP) – US President Donald Trump said Friday that Christians in Nigeria face an “existential threat,” as right-wing political allies including Senator Ted Cruz push claims of “Christian mass murder” that experts say are false. Narratives of “Christian genocide” and “persecution” in Nigeria have been bubbling up on social media in recent months, finding purchase among the American and European far right.
Africa’s most populous country is embroiled in numerous conflicts that experts say have killed both Christians and Muslims without distinction. But according to Trump, “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria.” “Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform, without providing evidence to support his claims. Trump said he is naming Nigeria a “country of particular concern” — a State Department designation for nations “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom.”
Claims of Christian persecution have also been pushed by some in Nigeria, where ethnic, religious and regional divisions have flared with deadly consequences in the past and still shape the country’s modern politics. Nigeria is almost evenly divided between a Muslim-majority north and a largely Christian south. Its northeast has been in the grip of jihadist violence for more than 15 years by the Islamist Boko Haram group, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives and forced two million people from their homes. The northwest is rife with gangs known as “bandits” who attack villages, killing and kidnapping residents. Central Nigeria sees frequent clashes between mostly Muslim herders and mainly Christian farmers — giving the violence there an air of religious tension, in a region that has seen sectarian violence in the past. Experts say the conflict is primarily over land, which is being squeezed by expanding populations and climate change.
Massad Boulos, Trump’s senior advisor for Arab and African affairs, said in mid-October that “Boko Haram and Islamic State are killing more Muslims than Christians.” Ladd Serwat, a senior Africa analyst at the US-based monitoring group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), told AFP that jihadist violence in Nigeria is “indiscriminate.” According to ACLED data, 52,915 civilians have been killed through targeted political killings since 2009, including those carried out by Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province, “ethnic/communal militias in the central and northern regions, violence by groups commonly described as ‘bandits,’ and self-defense militias.”
The data also showed there have been at least 389 instances of violence targeted at Christians between 2020 and 2025, with at least 318 fatalities. There were 197 violent attacks against Muslims during the same period, with more than 400 deaths. Trump’s comments come as a lobbying effort is underway on behalf of Nigerian separatists. Moran Global Strategies, representing the Biafra Republic Government in Exile, wrote to US congressional staffers in March warning of the “persecution of Christians” in the country, according to documents disclosed as part of American foreign lobbying rules. Biafra was the name of a short-lived breakaway state that declared independence in 1967, sparking a brutal civil war that lasted until 1970.
© 2024 AFP
