(LifeSiteNews) — On Saturday, the Nigerian government was caught off guard by a post on Truth Social from U.S. President Donald Trump.
“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,” he wrote. “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action.”
Trump added, in his signature style, “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!”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth responded beneath the post: “Yes sir.” Trump elaborated on his post Sunday, stating, “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.”
Predictably, the mainstream press pivoted immediately to trotting out a claim they have been making for years: That there is no targeted mass killing of Christians in Nigeria, and that there is certainly no genocide underway. The BBC led their coverage by stating that “claims of a genocide against Nigeria’s Christians have been circulating in recent weeks and months in some right-wing U.S. circles.”
This is manifestly deceptive. Many journalists and Christian organizations have been trying to draw the world’s attention to the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria for years; I wrote a long report titled “The Slow-Motion Genocide of Nigeria’s Christians” for The European Conservative in 2021 after conducting eyewitness interviews. Some readers might also recall the mass kidnapping of Christian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, and the horrors they endured from the Islamist captors. Some are still missing.
The BBC, however, reported in their coverage of Trump’s remarks that “Groups monitoring violence say there is no evidence to suggest that Christians are being killed more than Muslims in Nigeria, which is roughly evenly divided between followers of the two religions.” This slant is unsurprising considering the fact that the BBC actually profiled one of the primary groups butchering Christians, the Fulani, in 2021 with the title: “Nigeria’s hipster herders — the funky Fulanis.” The profile only made one vague mention of the Fulani’s penchant for attacking Christians and burning churches.
In fact, a surface perusal of the reports coming out of Nigeria in the last year make it clear that, contrary to the BBC’s coverage, Christians are being systematically targeted, kidnapped, and killed. A total of 7,800 Christians were abducted as of August.
“More than 7,000 Christians had been killed in Nigeria during the first 220 days of 2025, a civil-society watchdog said,” Newsweek reported recently. “This is an average of 35 killings a day, according to the recent report published by the Nigeria-based human-rights NGO International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) … The violence has displaced at least 12 million Christians since 2009, according to Intersociety. That year marked the start of Boko Haram’s insurgency to establish a caliphate in Nigeria and the broader Sahel.”
Since 2009, the group estimates that 125,000 Christians and 60,000 liberal Muslims have been killed. The claim that Christians and Muslims are being killed in “roughly even” numbers is not even remotely true — and the reason that media outlets are making the claim to begin with is to obscure the truth of what is happening on the ground. In fact, many outlets have repeatedly attributed Islamist attacks on Christians to climate change, insisting that the slaughters are primarily pastoral disputes over grazing grounds rather than religiously or ideologically motivated.
Despite that, the BBC went so far as to claim that “Trump earlier announced that he had declared Nigeria a ‘Country of Particular Concern; because of the ‘existential threat’ posed to its Christian population. He said ‘thousands’ had been killed, without providing any evidence.” The BBC could have uncovered such evidence with a very cursory online search, and I suspect they also have the capacity to conduct on-the-ground interviews. I could connect them with sources without any difficulty.
Whether or not the Trump administration decides to follow through on his threat of concrete action, his words in defense of Nigeria’s Christians have had an immediate effect. “Trump’s threat triggered alarm across Nigeria,” the BBC noted. “Many on social media urged the government to step up its fight against Islamist groups to avert a situation where foreign troops are sent into the country.” Government spokespeople hastened to assure the global press that stopping Islamist violence was of utmost concern.
“While Christians used to be vulnerable only in the Muslim-majority northern states, this violence continues to spread into the Middle Belt and even further south,” Open Doors, which monitors the persecution of Christians worldwide, observed recently. “The attacks are shockingly brutal. Many believers are killed, particularly men, while women are often kidnapped and targeted for sexual violence. More believers are killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world.”
“These militants also destroy homes, churches and livelihoods. More than 16.2 million Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, including high numbers from Nigeria, have been driven from their homes by violence and conflict. Millions now live in displacement camps.”
No doubt Nigerian Christians are heartened to hear that the president of the United States sees their plight, even while much of the world deliberately turns a blind eye.
