A Fox News report prompted Trump to post about Nigeria, setting off White House scramble

WASHINGTON — A Fox News report prompted President Donald Trump to denounce Nigeria for 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.

It remains unclear exactly what the administration will do to counter Islamist militants in Nigeria, but precision drone strikes are among preliminary options being considered, two U.S. officials said.

A White House spokesperson declined Monday to provide details about the plans under consideration.

“Under the leadership of President Trump, the administration is considering possible options for action to end the killing of Christians in Nigeria,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. “Any announcement will come directly from the president.”

Trump’s first social media post about Nigeria was made Friday evening after he watched a Fox News report on violence in the West African country, two administration officials said. The president asked his aides for more information on the situation and, shortly after, said in a Truth Social article that he was singling out Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” due to its failure, in his words, to stop the “mass slaughter” of Christians.

Trump then went further in an article published on Saturday, ordering 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 cease all aid and assistance to Nigeria and may very well go to that now disgraced country, ‘with guns blazing,’ to completely eliminate the Islamist terrorists who are committing these horrific atrocities,” Trump wrote.

This is not the first time the president’s social media messages have moved faster than policy deliberations, with officials rushing to draft diplomatic and military options and allied governments caught by surprise.

Experts and academics following events in Nigeria say Trump’s description of the security situation in the country as a “Christian genocide” is misleading and simplistic, as Nigerians of all faiths have suffered at the hands of Islamist extremists and other groups.

Trump’s messages even contradicted one of his own senior advisers at the State Department, Massad Boulous, who said last month that Muslims had died in greater numbers than Christians.

“People of all religions and tribes are dying, and it’s 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 state media Voice of Nigeria. “So people are suffering from all kinds of backgrounds. It’s not specifically aimed at one group or another.”

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump suggested he was willing to put troops on the ground in Nigeria, but that seemed a much less likely option because he was generally reluctant to deploy troops to conflicts abroad, according to the two U.S. officials.

A senior Trump administration official said the White House was in regular contact with the Nigerian government.

“We hope that the Nigerian government will be a partner in the process of resolving this issue and will work with the United States to take swift and immediate action to address the violence that is affecting Christians, as well as countless other innocent civilians across Nigeria,” the official said.

The Nigerian government was surprised by Trump’s statements, but officials cited friendly relations between the two countries. and called for a cooperative approach between the two governments to address the threat posed by Islamist groups.

Daniel Bwala, adviser to the Nigerian president, told the BBC that any military action against Islamist groups should be carried out jointly. Nigeria would welcome US help to fight militants, but added that it was a “sovereign” country.

Insurgent groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State’s West Africa branch sometimes use anti-Christian language, but their attacks are indiscriminate, targeting civilians, officials and local leaders regardless of their religion, according to Miriam Adah, an analyst with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project, a U.S.-based nonprofit that tracks conflicts and crises.

“In Nigeria, violence is widespread and complex. It involves insurgents, bandits, ethnic clashes and land disputes – not a single campaign to eliminate Christians,” Adah said. “Christians and Muslims alike are victims. »

The bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom has highlighted violence against Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, saying there are systematic violations of religious freedom in the country. “Violence affects large numbers of Christians and Muslims in several states in Nigeria,” the commission said in a report last year.

He also described the Nigerian government’s response to attacks on Nigerian civilians by “non-state actors” as slow or ineffective.

Islamist groups like Boko Haram are not the only actors behind the violence in Nigeria, experts say.

Besides Boko Haram and an 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.

Trump’s comments may have more to do with US domestic politics than responding to a security threat in Nigeria, experts say.

Some Republican lawmakers, aligned with elements of the Nigerian Christian diaspora in the United States, have long focused on the plight of Christians in Nigeria. And Trump may have been trying to send a message to his Christian supporters in the United States, experts say.

“Republicans on the Hill in particular have tried for years to portray Nigeria as a ‘Christian genocide,’ and they have strong 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 almost evenly split between Muslims and Christians, and sectarian division has sparked political violence in the past. Trump’s comments potentially threaten to “start a match” in an already fragile landscape, Kerr said.

“Putting the weight of the United States solely on the Christian side and framing things in an Islamic-Christian dimension is probably extremely unhelpful, both for Christians and Muslims in Nigeria,” Kerr said.

The United States, however, has reason to question how the Nigerian government has used weapons and other aid provided by Washington over the years, Kerr said.

“Was the president more measured in his comments saying, ‘Nigeria, we’re giving them all this money, what happened? That, I think, is a legitimate criticism for the United States to say to the government, ‘Look, what are you doing? Where is the strategy? Where is the success, where is the progress that we’re looking for?'”