U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Friday that Nigeria has been added to the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC). According to him, “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.” He subsequently threatened Nigeria with military action.
For starters, when a country is designated a CPC, it means the U.S. government considers it responsible for “particularly severe violations of religious freedom,” such as torture, prolonged detention without trial, forced disappearances, or other grave abuses. This label often opens the door to sanctions and diplomatic pressure.
But is Nigeria truly persecuting Christians, or is Washington constructing a narrative for political ends?
Nigeria’s Religious Landscape
Nigeria is the world’s seventh most populous nation and Africa’s largest, hosting both the biggest Muslim and Christian populations on the continent. Its government has been multireligious, not only because adherents of both faiths have equal rights to leadership, but also because successive administrations have generally maintained a balance between religious groups. A pastor has served as vice president, while several pastors and Islamic clerics have served as ministers. Religion and politics have long coexisted, sometimes uneasily, but never under a system of state persecution.
Since 2011, however, the country has had to contend with the insurgency of Boko Haram and similar groups that have operated mostly in Muslim-populated areas, targeting anyone who does not share their ideology.
It is therefore puzzling that a country thousands of miles away, where public figures known for Christian advocacy are being assassinated, now insists that Christians are being exterminated in Nigeria. The claim appears, at best, exaggerated and, at worst, politically motivated.
Genesis and Reaction to the Narrative
What Donald Trump has amplified today is actually an old propaganda that was reignited in September, coinciding with the rise of anti-Israeli sentiment on Nigerian social media platforms. Around the same time, several Zionist Christian figures in the United States—including comedian Bill Maher, Senator Ted Cruz, and other American lawmakers with close ties to AIPAC—began speaking of a “genocide” in Nigeria.
In fact, during October, Ted Cruz posted more on Nigeria than about his own Texas constituency. As if that were not enough, this network employed bot accounts, while Christian Zionist-owned platforms such as RLO Action launched Google ads to promote the narrative. In other parts of the world, figures such as Tommy Robinson (UK), Ahmed Sharif (UAE), Andrew Scheer (Canada), and Dominik Tarczyński (Poland) have joined the chorus on X. All share two commonalities: support for Israel and hostility towards Muslims.
Yet apart from a few unknown faces appearing on American television, no prominent Christian leader in Nigeria has confirmed the existence of any “genocide” or “massacre” specifically targeting Christians. Of course, a few voices on X have echoed the narrative—mostly out of political bias or sectarian resentment, with comments such as, “At least that will help bring the APC government down.”
Many Nigerian religious leaders, both Christian and Muslim, have dismissed the American characterisation of the situation. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) acknowledged that violence and insecurity persist in the country, but rejected the idea that only Christians are victims.
Bishop Matthew Kukah, an outspoken Christian activist and the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, the seat of Nigerian Muslim leadership, expressed similar concerns at the launch of the Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) 2025 World Report on Religious Freedom in the World, held at the Augustinianum Hall, Vatican City, on 21 October. He noted that if Nigeria were truly waging a war against Christians, “both myself and my small flock would not exist.” Kukah further warned that designating Nigeria as a CPC could make dialogue among religious leaders “even harder.”
In a country where both faiths coexist in virtually every region—and where the president’s wife is a pastor in one of Nigeria’s largest churches—the idea of state-sanctioned persecution of Christians simply does not hold.
The Reality of Violence in Nigeria
There is no denying that people who identify as Christians suffer in Nigeria—but their suffering is no worse than that of their Muslim counterparts. Nigeria continues to grapple with terrorism, banditry, and farmer-herder conflicts, all of which have complex ethnic, economic, and environmental roots.
In the country’s central regions, disputes often arise between largely Christian farmers and mostly Muslim herders. These conflicts are frequently misrepresented as religious wars, even though they are driven more by land competition and insecurity than by theology. To call such clashes a campaign of genocide against Christians is to ignore their deeper causes and to risk inflaming existing tensions.
America’s Selective Outrage
The American right wing’s portrayal of Nigeria as a battlefield between “radical Islamists” and “persecuted Christians” seems designed to serve its own agenda. It allows Western conservatives to present themselves as defenders of global Christianity while conveniently ignoring atrocities committed by their allies.
The same politicians silent about Israeli attacks on Christian Palestinians and ancient churches in Gaza now claim to care deeply about Nigerian Christians. Moreover, if their concern were truly about faith and humanity, they would condemn all acts of violence regardless of who the victims are, as Christianity teaches?
Consider recent events: the Church of Saint Porphyrius, one of the oldest in the world, was struck by an Israeli missile on 19 October 2023. On 17 July 2025, the Holy Family Church, Gaza’s only Catholic church, was shelled by Israeli tank fire. The fifth-century Byzantine Church of Jabalia was reported destroyed in January 2024. Even Gaza’s only Evangelical and Baptist church met the same fate when it was attacked just a day after Christmas 2023. Meanwhile, many of these churches had survived over a thousand years of Muslim rule but only to be destroyed by America’s closest ally.
If Washington’s concern were truly about the safety of Christians, it would not ignore the devastation of such sacred sites. The selective outrage reveals that this is not about religious freedom but about political theatre.
What History Tells Us
Unfortunately, some of today’s rhetoric risks reopening old wounds. Because, if there is anything that will put “Christian” and “genocide” in same context in Nigerian history, it would be the Christian British invasion of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1903, when colonial forces overthrew the Sultan and massacred his followers.
As for the idea of one religion massacring the other, this trend is not new. Boko Haram’s early propaganda also claimed that Muslims were victims of a “Christian-led” state—an accusation that later fuelled years of violence and insurgency. Perhaps the Americans are expecting such violence to repeat itself.
Conclusion
That Washington is not protecting Nigerian Christians is a truism that even the Nigerian Christians themselves know very well! Rather, it seems to be manufacturing a crisis to appear morally relevant. Nigeria’s problems are real and urgent, but they are not a war of faiths. Both Christians and Muslims have suffered from failures of governance, corruption, and insecurity.
If the goal is truly to defend human life and dignity, the U.S. must stop weaponising religion for geopolitical ends. True friends of Nigeria will support peace, justice, and interfaith harmony, not an imaginative clash.
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