Trump Deserves Credit for Focus on Nigerian Christians

National Review Online

Monday, November 10, 2025

 

For too long, the persecution of Christians in Nigeria has proven social observer Régis Debray a prophet. “Anti-Christian persecution,” he said, “falls squarely into the political blind spot of the West; the victims are ‘too Christian’ to excite the Left, and ‘too foreign’ to excite the Right.”

 

So it was commendable that President Trump has been speaking out, both on social media and in a speech. “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” he wrote on Truth Social. Appropriately, he announced Nigeria’s redesignation as a “country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act. We welcome his tough stance against Islamic terrorists but at the same time caution against significant intervention.

 

The humanitarian situation in Nigeria has gotten very little attention in American media, with notable exceptions like Bill Maher comparing the actual, genocidal intentions and actions of Islamic extremists in Nigeria with the cynical and misleading coverage of the Israel Defense Forces’ actions in Gaza. “If you don’t know what’s going on in Nigeria, your media sources suck,” he averred. “You are in a bubble.” Over the past 15 years, 19,000 churches have been destroyed. In 2025 alone, 7,000 Christians in Nigeria have been killed, and an equal number have been kidnapped.

 

The Nigerian government emphasizes that it has constitutional guarantees for religious freedom, and denies that it looks the other way or allows Islamist groups to act with impunity. Instead, it explains its situation as one in which the whole country suffers from instability and the violence of non-state actors. While it is true that the Nigerian state lacks a monopoly on violence, and that non-state actors like Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province prey upon Muslims, too, journalistic organizations and human rights groups have routinely found that the Nigerian government fails to adequately investigate, pursue, and prosecute the persecutors of Christians. Especially in the northern part of the country, the Nigerian state actively cooperates in the enforcement of sharia laws against blasphemy that target Christians and appears to license mob reprisals against them. Pastors and priests are routinely kidnapped and ransomed. The biggest threat to Christians comes from Fulani Muslim herders, who are engaged in what look like coordinated campaigns of Islamization and ethnic cleansing across the Middle Belt. Some estimates say that as many as 100,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009.

 

The Biden administration foolishly bought into neo-Marxist theorizing about these conflicts, believing that they were mere clashes between economic classes over resources made scarce by climate change. Ignoring the reality of Fulani herders chanting “Allahu Akbar” as they burned Christians out of their homes, they lifted the designation of concern that Trump rightfully reinstated. Catholic Bishop Wilfred Anagbe testified about persecution in his Benue diocese of Makurdi in March of this year, stating, “The experience of Christians in Nigeria can be summed up as a Church under Islamist extermination.”

 

Trump has gone beyond drawing attention to these tragedies to saber-rattling: “We’re going to do things to Nigeria that Nigeria’s not gonna be happy about” and “may go into that country, Guns-a-blazin!” It would be one thing to expand weapon sales, share intelligence, and offer training to counter Boko Haram and Islamist militants. But the prospects of major U.S. intervention in this situation are grim.

 

Destabilizing the existing Nigerian state would most likely result in more power and leverage for the non-state paramilitaries, and might also strengthen and intensify the almost-medieval style of brigandage that is practiced throughout the country, extracting blood and treasure from Nigeria’s workers and enterprises. Nigeria is a country of 237 million people. The United States’ assuming responsibility for quelling the various conflicts and religious warfare would be a forbidding and gargantuan task. Our military resources are already stretched thin in more important theaters — reinforcing NATO and Ukraine in Europe, intimidating Venezuela, and trying to fulfill backorders for Pacific allies like Australia and Taiwan, who face a rising China. It’s not remotely the time to undertake serious military operations in a country more divided and ten times larger than Iraq.