MADRID (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Ignatius Ayau Kaigama of Abuja, Nigeria, during a press briefing last week, called on the Trump administration to provide intelligence and weapons to the Nigerian government to help combat the brutal persecution of the country’s Christians at the hands of Islamic terrorists.
During a March 20 press briefing hosted by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) as part of its “May Persecution Not Have the Last Word: Heal Nigeria” campaign, Archbishop Kaigama praised Trump for being the first world leader to “clearly and unequivocally” declare that Nigerian Christians are being persecuted, per EWTN News reported.
The archbishop emphasized, however, that Trump’s remarks and his administration’s December bombing in Nigeria have only emboldened Islamist terror groups such as Boko Haram to carry out more attacks on Christians and called on the 47th president to share intelligence with and provide weapons to the Nigerian government to help them put an end to the persecution for good.
“I was glad when I heard Donald Trump say, ‘We are going to go to Nigeria; we are going to put an end to Boko Haram,’” Kaigama said. “At Christmas, we received a gift — a bomb that fell on Nigerian soil — and, truth be told, I could not say whether it did any good.”
READ: Trump addresses Christian persecution in Nigeria with warning to ‘wipe out’ Islamists
“That incident, coupled with Donald Trump’s words, has greatly inflamed the passions of the Islamists in that territory,” he added. “The number of attacks, the number of kidnappings carried out by Boko Haram and other groups, has been rising ever since.”
Kaigama then urged Trump to collaborate with the Nigerian government by providing weapons and intelligence to wipe out these Islamists and end the persecution of Christians.
“So we say to Donald Trump: Give us intelligence reports, give us weapons, collaborate with our government, and then find a way to eradicate all these military groups,” he said. The archbishop also called on the leaders of other Western nations to “stop ignoring” the persecution of Christians in Nigeria and across Africa.
Trump, on the other hand, has blamed the Nigerian government for failing to protect its Christian population and last November threatened to cut off all aid and use the U.S. military to “wipe out” the Islamists. His administration also declared Nigeria a “country of particular concern,” a designation reserved for governments that perpetrate or tolerate “particularly severe violations of religious freedom,” and called the persecution of its Christians a “genocide.”
When the U.S. military finally intervened in Nigeria with a Christmas Day strike against the country’s Islamists, it was notably a joint operation with the full cooperation of Nigeria’s government.
A 2025 Global Christian Relief (GCR) Red List report found that Nigeria is the most dangerous place for Christians in the world. The report detailed how most of the killings in Nigeria occur in northern states governed by Islamic sharia law, where Christians “often live in remote villages in semi-arid landscapes, making them particularly vulnerable to attacks.”
Persecution of Christians in Nigeria began to spike after 1999, when 12 northern states adopted sharia law. The rise of the terrorist group Boko Haram in 2009 marked a dramatic escalation in the attacks. Famously, the group kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in 2014; 87 of them are still listed as “missing.”
READ: Nigerian bishops condemn ‘atrocities,’ ‘brutal attacks’ against Christians
From 2009 to 2022, over 50,000 Christians were killed in the country, an Open Doors study discovered. A 2024 report found that more than 8,000 Nigerian Christians were killed and thousands more were abducted in 2023, making it the bloodiest year on record for Islamic attacks against Christians in the country. The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law reported in spring 2023 that over 50,000 people have been killed in the country for their Christian faith since 2009.
Recent attacks in the country have seen the abduction and even murder of several Catholic priests and seminarians. In a July 2025 press release, the Diocese of Auchi in Edo State reported that several gunmen attacked the Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary, killing one security guard and kidnapping three seminarians. In November, another attack on St. Mary’s Catholic boarding school in Papiri saw gunmen abduct about 315 students and 12 of their teachers.
READ: More than 300 students, staff abducted from Catholic school in Nigeria last week
