Nigeria is a fast-growing country with an estimated population of over 239 million. According to the CIA Worldbook’s 2018 estimate, roughly 53.5% of the Nigerian population is Muslim and roughly 45.9% of the population is Christian.
Despite being over 100 million strong, Nigeria’s Christian population faces brutal persecution at the hands of radical Muslim groups.
President Donald Trump, who vowed ahead of the 2024 election to “protect persecuted Christians,” made abundantly clear over the weekend that those now savaging the followers of Christ in Nigeria may soon reap the whirlwind, courtesy of the U.S. military.
While the Nigerian regime has decried Trump’s efforts to prevent further bloodshed, others have celebrated the American president’s interest in resolving yet another conflict — including Trinidadian rapper Nicki Minaj, who thanked Trump and his team on Saturday.
Background
The Christian persecution watchdog Open Doors now ranks Nigeria as the seventh-worst place for Christians in the world, noting that “Christians are particularly at risk from targeted attacks by Islamist militants, including Fulani fighters, Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province).”
According to the watchdog, over 4,100 Christians were killed for their faith between October 2022 and September 2023 alone — an average of 11 Christians slaughtered every day. During that same period studied by Open Doors, over 3,300 Nigerian Christians were abducted. The situation appears to have grown more dire in the years since.
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Photo by OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT/AFP via Getty Images
A report issued in August by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law indicated that Fulani fighters and other jihadists massacred over 7,000 Christians in the first seven months of this year.
While some academics have warned against grouping the mass-killing Fulani herder-militant groups with other Islamist outfits targeting Christians — claiming their attacks are instead driven by economics or climate — the Fulani attacks appear to have a religious motive as well.
Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern and a leading expert on religious persecution, told Blaze News earlier this year that like Boko Haram, the Fulani militants, a group of traditionally nomadic cattle herders seeking greater grazing lands for their livestock, “are also driven by Islam’s practice of using violence to subjugate territories to Islam. In fact, the Fulanis are the driving force behind radical Islam’s massive land-grab of a huge swath of Africa known as the Sahel. They are motivated by a desire to rebuild a caliphate they had built in the 1700s and 1800s.”
The persecution of Christians by the Fulani militants and other radical Muslim groups has reportedly worsened since Bola Ahmed Tinubu became Nigeria’s president in 2023.
Taking action
Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) and other lawmakers, confronted with indications that the situation is worsening for Nigeria’s Christians, have called on the Trump administration to take action.
“Since Boko Haram’s insurgency in 2009, more than 50,000 Christians have been murdered and more than 5 million have been displaced. Just this year, a priest was kidnapped and murdered on Ash Wednesday. 54 Christians were martyred on Palm Sunday,” Moore noted early last month. “At least 250 priests have been attacked or killed in the last decade. More than 19,000 churches have been attacked or destroyed since 2009 — averaging three per day.”
Moore, who indicated that elements of the Nigerian regime have reportedly been involved in recent anti-Christian attacks, asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. Evidently the administration similarly feels strongly about the matter.
‘If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet.’
President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he was applying the designation and asked Reps. Moore and Tom Cole (R-Okla.) along with the House Appropriations Committee to immediately look into the matter.
“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” wrote Trump. “I am hereby making Nigeria a ‘COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN’ — But that is the least of it. When Christians, or any such group, is slaughtered like is happening in Nigeria (3,100 versus 4,476 Worldwide), something must be done!”
The CPC designation is applied under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to nations engaged in severe violations of religious freedom. The designation can carry with it significant economic and diplomatic consequences.
Nigeria was previously slapped with the designation by the first Trump administration in 2020, but this was subsequently lifted by the Biden administration.
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Aftermath of a terrorist attack on a Catholic Church in southwest Nigeria. AFP/Getty Images
Nicki Minaj was among those who celebrated Trump’s decision, stating, “Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God.”
“No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion,” said the rapper.
“Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice. Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously. God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.”
Republican Reps. Moore, Cole, and Mario Díaz-Balart (Fla.) noted in a joint statement, “With President Trump announcing he will be redesignating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, the United States is making clear in one resolute voice: religious persecution will not be tolerated. The scourge of anti-Christian violence and oppression of other religious minorities by radical Islamic terrorists is an affront to religious freedom. This is a critical step in mobilizing leadership and attention to confront evil extremism.”
Just in case the designation wasn’t enough, Trump threatened a military intervention in the event that the Nigerian regime fails to protect Christians.
“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday evening.
“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!” added the president.
Fresh off blowing an apparent narco-trafficking vessel to smithereens, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed the Department of War was “preparing for action.”
The promise of a reckoning clearly made officials over in the Nigerian capital of Abuja nervous.
President Tinubu rushed out a statement on Saturday claiming that his nation “stands firmly as a democracy governed by constitutional guarantees of religious liberty.
“The characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians,” wrote Tinubu. “Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so. Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”
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Jihadists, Nigeria, Nigerian, Christians, Persecution, Islam, Islamists, Muslims, Africa, Boko haram, Fulanii, Politics