A Fox News report prompted Trump to publish an article about Nigeria, sparking a conflict in the White House
WASHINGTON — A Fox News report prompted President Donald Trump to criticize Nigeria over the killing of Christians and then threaten military action, sparking a stampede at the White House over the weekend, according to several U.S. officials.
Two US officials said it is still unclear what – if anything – the administration will do to confront Islamist militants in Nigeria, but precision drone strikes are among the initial options being considered.
A White House spokesman on Monday declined to provide any details about the plans under consideration.
“At the direction of President Trump, the administration is planning potential action options to stop the killing of Christians in Nigeria,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. “Any announcements will come directly from the president.”
Trump’s first social media post about Nigeria came on Friday evening after he saw a Fox News report on violence in the West African country, two administration officials said. The president asked his staff for more information about the situation and, shortly after, announced in a post on Truth Social that he was designating Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” because of its failure, in his words, to stop the “mass slaughter” of Christians.
Trump then went further in a post on Saturday, directing the Department of Defense to prepare for possible military action.
“If the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the United States will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may go to this now devastated country,” Trump wrote, “with guns blazing, to completely eliminate the Islamic terrorists who are committing these terrible atrocities.”
This is not the first time the president’s rapid social media posts have moved faster than political deliberations, as officials rush to formulate diplomatic and military options and allied governments are caught off guard.
Experts and scholars tracking events in Nigeria say Trump’s portrayal of the security situation in the country as a “Christian genocide” is misleading and oversimplifying, as Nigerians of all faiths have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists and other groups.
Trump’s posts even contradicted one of his senior State Department advisers, Massad Boulos, who said last month that Muslims had died in greater numbers than Christians.
“People of all religions and all tribes are dying, and this is very unfortunate, and we even know that Boko Haram and ISIS are killing more Muslims than Christians,” Boulos said during his meeting with Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Rome, according to government media. Voice of Nigeria. “So people are suffering from all kinds of backgrounds. This is not specifically targeting one group or another.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump hinted that he was open to putting boots on the ground in Nigeria, but that appeared to be a much less likely option because he was generally averse to deploying troops to conflicts abroad, according to US officials.
A senior Trump administration official said the White House is in regular contact with the Nigerian government.
“We hope that the Nigerian government will be a partner in the process of addressing this issue, and will work with the United States to take quick and immediate action to address the violence affecting Christians, as well as countless other innocent civilians throughout Nigeria,” the official said.
The Nigerian government was surprised by Trump’s statements, but officials pointed to the friendly relations between the two countries He called for a cooperative approach between the two governments to address the threat posed by Islamist groups.
Daniel Bwala, an advisor to the Nigerian president, told the BBC that any military action against Islamist groups must be undertaken jointly. Nigeria welcomes US help in confronting militants, but added that it is a “sovereign” country.
Insurgent groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa branch sometimes use anti-Christian language, but their attacks are indiscriminate, targeting civilians, officials and local leaders regardless of religion, according to Maryam Ada, an analyst at the Armed Conflict and Event Data Project (ACLED), a U.S.-based nonprofit that tracks conflicts and crises.
“In Nigeria, violence is widespread and complex. It includes insurgents, bandits, ethnic clashes and land disputes – and there is no single campaign to eliminate Christians,” Adah said. “Christians and Muslims are the victims.”
The bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom has cited violence against Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, saying there are systematic violations of religious freedom in the country. The committee said in its report last year: “The violence affects large numbers of Christians and Muslims in several states across Nigeria.”
She also described the Nigerian government’s response to attacks on Nigerian civilians by “non-state actors” as slow or ineffective.
Experts say Islamist groups like Boko Haram are not the only actors behind the violence in Nigeria.
Beyond Boko Haram and the Islamic State branch in northern Nigeria, there is a separatist movement in the southeast, ethnic militant groups in the oil-producing Niger Delta, kidnapping gangs in the northwest, and clashes between Muslim herders and Christian farmers in the Middle Belt, fueled by climate change.
Experts say Trump’s comments may have had more to do with domestic US politics than his treatment of the security threat in Nigeria.
Some Republican lawmakers, allied with elements of the Nigerian Christian diaspora population in the United States, have long focused on the plight of Christians in Nigeria. Experts said that Trump may have been trying to deliver a message to his Christian supporters in the United States.
“Congressional Republicans in particular have been trying for years to portray Nigeria as a ‘Christian genocide,’ and they have powerful allies in the Nigerian diaspora in the United States,” said Darren Kerr, dean of the School of Peace Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
Nigeria’s population of 230 million is divided almost equally between Muslims and Christians, and the sectarian divide has sparked political violence in the past. Kerr said Trump’s comments risked potentially “lighting a match” in an already fragile scene.
“Putting the weight of the United States only on the Christian side and framing matters in the Muslim-Christian dimension may be completely unhelpful for both Christians and Muslims in Nigeria,” Kiir said.
The United States, however, has reasons to question how the Nigerian government has used weapons and other aid provided by Washington over the years, Kiir said.
“If the president had been more moderate in his comments and said, ‘Nigeria, we are giving them all this money, what would have happened? I think this is a legitimate criticism by the United States to say to the government: Look, what are you guys doing? Where is the strategy? Where is the success, where is the progress that we expect?