Explainer: Why is Trump threatening military action in Nigeria?

US President Donald Trump has threatened to freeze aid to Nigeria and take military action unless its government stops what he has called the killing of “very large numbers” of Christians by jihadists.

Allegations of

Christians being persecuted in the West African country

have been floating around right-wing circles in the US for years, and Mr Trump amplified these claims during his first term in office, too.

His latest comments about

a possible intervention

mark an escalation of the rhetoric.

Nigeria, a nation of about 230 million people roughly split between a Muslim north and Christian south, does face formidable security challenges. 

Jihadist groups have wreaked havoc across the north-east, bombing and raiding villages, towns and military bases, and killing thousands; criminal gangs have turned kidnapping for ransom into a thriving industry, seizing victims from roadsides, schools and hospitals; herders and grain farmers have warred over access to land and water; and pirates have targeted vessels off the coast, disrupting shipping and trade. 

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has denied that any religious group is being singled out.

Why is Nigeria so unstable?

Nigeria suffers from severe inequality.

While it is one of Africa’s biggest oil producers and is rich in minerals, the extraction of these materials has benefited mainly a tiny political elite.

Competition for scarce resources, such as water and land, and the proliferation of armed criminal gangs have driven much of the ethnic and political violence.  

Militant group Boko Haram – whose Hausa-language name means “Western education is a sin” – has been fighting to impose its version of Islamic law on Nigeria since 2009.

The group gained international notoriety in 2014, when it

abducted at least 276 teenage girls

from a dormitory in the predominantly Christian town of Chibok, but it has targeted civilians across the religious spectrum. 

In recent years, Boko Haram has been largely overshadowed by an offshoot known as Islamic State of West Africa Province, or Iswap, an ISIS affiliate that first emerged in 2016.

Iswap has attacked dozens of fortified army bases in Nigeria over the course of 2025 using captured commercial drones and night-vision equipment. 

Though successive Nigerian governments have tried to counter the militants, their forces have been stretched thin by the myriad of security challenges that span a vast territory. 

What has Trump said about Nigeria?

At the end of October, Mr Trump announced he was designating Nigeria

a “Country of Particular Concern”

– a categorisation the US applies to states it considers to have engaged in severe violations of religious freedom.

Mr Trump said that Christianity is facing “an existential threat” in Nigeria.

Other nations that have been labelled countries of particular concern include China, Russia and Iran.

Mr Trump previously placed Nigeria on this watch list during his first term, but the decision was reversed by the Biden administration.

In early November, Mr Trump upped the ante by threatening to immediately cut off all aid to Nigeria and instructing the US Defence Department to prepare for potential military action to “wipe out the Islamic Terrorists”. 

“They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers,” he said. “We’re not going to allow that to happen.”

Mr Trump did not rule out the possibility of calling in air strikes or sending ground troops into Nigeria. This adds to the growing mismatch between his rhetoric during the 2024 election, when he campaigned against US military forays abroad, and his increasing threats of overseas intervention now that he is in office. 

It is unclear what prompted Mr Trump to turn his focus to Nigeria now.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz has been among the voices on the right urging the government to take action. In September, he introduced a Bill to sanction Nigerian officials who “facilitate violence against Christians and other religious minorities, including by Islamist terrorist groups”. 

Does the violence in Nigeria disproportionately target Christians?

While religion is one driver of the violence in Nigeria, such attacks are often intertwined with ethnic and resource-based tensions. Analysts attribute the bulk of the violence in Nigeria to criminality.

There were almost 12,000 attacks on civilians between January 2020 and September 2025, resulting in more than 20,000 deaths, according to data compiled by independent conflict monitor Acled.

But only 5 per cent of these attacks were classed as explicitly religiously motivated, in which 317 Christians and 417 Muslims were killed.

The primarily Muslim north has by far been the most impacted by the broad violence in the country, as bandits in the north-west and Islamists in the north-east claim thousands of lives each year.

Conflict has shaded into religion in central Nigeria, where predominantly Muslim nomadic herders have clashed with mainly Christian farmers – although access to land and water are at the root of most of those long-running clashes.

The unceasing violence reflects successive governments’ failure to protect Nigerians of all faiths and has rendered large parts of the country effectively stateless, according to Mr Cheta Nwanze, a partner at the Lagos-based research firm SBM Intelligence.

What financial implications could Trump’s threatened actions have?

More than half of Nigerians live below the poverty line and the loss of American financial assistance would be a serious blow to the beneficiaries of US-funded programmes.

Aid flows have already tailed off significantly since Mr Trump re-entered office, dropping from US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion) in 2023 – the last full year for which data is available – to around US$250 million in the first 10 months of 2025, according to the US State Department.

Mr Trump’s recent criticism also bodes ill for the Nigerian government’s efforts to persuade him to

lower the 15 per cent tariff

imposed on the country’s exports.

Concern about the potential fallout has rippled through financial markets.

Nigeria’s dollar bonds and its currency, the naira, slumped after Mr Trump threatened military action.

The souring of investor sentiment is a major setback for Mr Tinubu, who has taken difficult steps to reform the economy in a bid to revive growth and attract more foreign investment. These measures include removing a costly fuel subsidy and liberalising the currency market.

How has Nigeria’s government responded to Trump’s comments?

Mr Tinubu, who is Muslim and married to a Christian pastor, posted on social media platform X: “The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality.”

He said that his government has “maintained an open and active engagement with Christian and Muslim leaders alike and continues to address security challenges that affect citizens across faiths and regions”.

Mr Tinubu added that his administration is committed to working with the US and international community to protect all faiths. BLOOMBERG