PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump on Saturday said he ordered the Defense Department to prepare for potential strikes in Nigeria, an escalation in his efforts to pressure the West African country’s government over its alleged failure to stop the persecution of Christians. Trump also said he instructed all U.S. aid and assistance to Nigeria to cease, effective immediately.
“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” he wrote in a social media post Saturday evening on the Truth Social platform.
A day earlier, Trump said he would label Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” a designation under a law that lists countries that systemically violate religious freedoms. Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has denied such allegations.
“The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians,” Tinubu said in a statement posted to X on Saturday, before Trump’s threat of military action.
The Nigerian government did not immediately respond to questions about its reaction to Trump’s latest directive. The Defense Department did not immediately provide further details.
In a reply to Trump’s message, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on X, “Yes sir” and that he would prepare the agency for action. “Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” he wrote.
Nigeria is a diverse, multiethnic country split between the mostly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.
Most violence in Nigeria has taken place in the northeast, where extremist group Boko Haram has regularly attacked churches and kidnapped children for more than a decade as part of its campaign to build an Islamist state through violence. In the southwest, violence has mostly consisted of kidnappings for ransom and conflict between farmers and herders from the Yoruba ethnic group.
Trump’s comment came weeks after U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) urged Congress to designate Nigeria as a violator of religious freedom and introduced a bill to hold accountable Nigerian officials “who facilitate Islamist jihadist violence and the imposition of blasphemy laws.”
Trump posted on Truth Social from his club at Mar-a-Lago, where he is spending the weekend as pressure mounts for him to do more to reopen the government. Tens of millions of people are bracing for delays in critical food benefits, and polls show that Americans blame Trump and the GOP more than Democrats for the shutdown.