Introduction
In a recent post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump instructed the United States military to prepare to go into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing.” The development may be surprising for some, but those who closely follow US-Nigeria relations should not be surprised that the president, or Republicans more broadly, would express concern over violence against Christians in Nigeria. The president cited this violence as his basis for threatening military action on November 1, one day after announcing that he would redesignate Nigeria as a country of particular concern (CPC) for violations of religious freedom.
But there are two fundamental problems with the approach the president has outlined:
- The nature of militant violence in Nigeria is more complicated. First, the premise that Christians in Nigeria face something akin to nationwide persecution is questionable, as Christians and Muslims alike suffer from Nigeria’s rampant insecurity. Nigeria is not, as some believe, the site of a concerted war against Christians. Rather, the country faces something more like a death by a thousand cuts, in which various militant groups in different corners of the country degrade state sovereignty, causing increased violence and extremism.
- Military intervention comes with serious risks. Depending on their scale, scope, and form, US military operations in Nigeria could recklessly destabilize Africa’s most populous country. On the other hand, operations could be limited in impact and largely symbolic. The latter scenario is more likely but not without its own risks. If the US insists on being a more highly visible military partner than it has traditionally been, its strategy may contradict Nigerian preferences and further polarize Nigerian society.
The Nigerian government could have taken steps to reduce the chances of American intervention. But officials have at least made it clear over the past 48 hours that they do not seek to escalate the situation. It is entirely conceivable that President Trump will walk back his maximalist initial salvo and settle for some form of renewed bilateral security cooperation. While this is unlikely to affect the state of Nigeria’s conflicts in the near term, it would be politically agreeable to both governments.
The Trump administration and Nigerian officials should both recognize certain truths. The US administration needs to understand that (a) Nigeria cannot immediately and effortlessly dismantle all militant networks within its borders, and (b) religiously divisive narratives will make it harder for the Nigerian government to achieve the necessary political consensus to tackle insecurity. Abuja, for its part, should understand that many in Congress are frustrated with Nigeria, in part because they believe the country has repeatedly failed to utilize American security assistance effectively against terrorists. With sufficient political will, President Bola Tinubu’s administration could use this crisis to (1) reform Nigerian security forces so that they can combat terrorism better, and (2) address some of the conflict’s underlying drivers.
This would be the best potential outcome of the current situation, one that is by no means guaranteed. Before considering what this resolution might entail, American policymakers should understand some essential context about insecurity in Nigeria.
Is Violence in Nigeria Specifically Anti-Christian?
Conservative lawmakers in the United States and international religious liberty advocates, as well as some Nigerian churches, have long argued that Nigerian Christians face persecution or even a genocide. These advocates believe that the Nigerian state has, at best, failed to combat the groups perpetrating this genocide—and that it may even explicitly tolerate them.
The reality is more complex. As I previously testified before the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Nigeria is experiencing multiple distinct yet overlapping conflicts. Some, but not all, of these conflicts are religious in nature. For example, the various factions of the Boko Haram insurgency are dyed-in-the-wool jihadists waging what they view as a holy war. But some of these jihadists have killed numerous Muslim civilians alongside Christians (perhaps even more of the former, although comprehensive statistics are lacking). Boko Haram’s ultra-radical ideology makes virtually no distinction between the two. Nigerian Muslims may therefore take offense at President Trump’s framing of the issue as unique to Christians, which downplays the immense costs many other communities have paid.
Moreover, many other militant groups, such as the bandits that increasingly terrorize the country’s northwest, do not target their victims on the basis of religion. These bandits are ethnically Fulani, a group that many Nigerians associate with a nineteenth-century jihad. But I have found that suspicions of a religious motive to Fulani violence are often unfounded. Several years ago, I traveled into the bush to interview one such gang of bandits. They were well-armed, deadly, and operating with near impunity—a serious indictment of the Nigerian government’s inability to reign in the crisis. Yet their animus was reserved not for Christians but for their Muslim neighbors from the Hausa ethnic group, with whom Fulani pastoralists have had increasingly hostile relations in recent years.
In parts of central Nigeria, conflict between Fulani herders and Christian farmers over land is invariably tied up with complicated historical legacies of Muslim conquest, British colonialism, and post-colonial religious tensions. Even in these states, my field experience suggests that the myriad local conflicts are not all identical: Sometimes the violence is quite one-sided (e.g., herders engaging in violent land grabs), while in other instances, animus toward local herders might trigger reprisals that escalate into tit-for-tat violence. (In certain other Middle Belt conflicts, Muslim herders are not involved at all.)
My point is that there are many different militant groups around the country engaged in violence and kidnappings for various reasons (including, for example, pirates in the south who practice Christianity and animism). Even many of the supposedly Muslim militants are not waging a religious war so much as they are opportunistically plundering whoever is in their reach. It is not the role of US policymakers to scrutinize or litigate every local conflict in Nigeria. But they would do well to recognize the variety of actors involved and the fact that both Christians and Muslims are victims—sometimes because of their faith, and sometimes for other, tragic reasons.
Moreover, successive Nigerian governments, led by Christian and Muslim presidents alike, have failed to quell this insecurity. The reasons for this failure are much more complex than the individual failings of those leaders (although there is plenty of blame to go around). Any force hoping to solve Nigeria’s militant crisis will need to tackle broader structural and political constraints such as corruption and oil rentierism, ethnic and regional political rivalries and cooptation, and a legacy of military rule. In other words, it is improbable that anti-Christian animus has been central to the security failings of multiple consecutive governments.
Is Trump Making a Military Threat or a Play for Leverage?
Advocates might argue that, even if Christians are not the sole victims of violence in Nigeria, a CPC designation will help push the Nigerian government to address instability. That is a debate worth having. But President Trump has upped the ante with his threat of military action.
There are at least two ways to read Trump’s statement of military action. The first is that the president is seriously preparing for unilateral strikes in Nigeria. While I think such strikes are unlikely, the potential ramifications are so significant that they merit a brief discussion.
A Military Contingency
US military operations in Africa have typically been most effective when focused on specific, limited operational ends. For example, US special forces successfully rescued an American citizen held by militants in northwest Nigeria in 2020. The US has had similar operational success when hunting down specific terror suspects. American forces killed a veteran al-Qaeda operative in Somalia in 2009 and the leader of the Somalia-based terror group al-Shabaab in 2014. Still, leadership decapitation strategies have a mixed track record. In the 11 years since the latter killing, the US has launched numerous airstrikes in Somalia. But al-Shabaab remains nearly as powerful as ever. (US and European track records in the Sahel similarly reveal the difficulties of more ambitious military-led stabilization efforts.)
Stopping nonstate actors from killing Nigerian civilians, whether Christian or Muslim, is more like defeating al-Shabaab and stabilizing a fractured Somalia than rescuing a hostage. Yet it is possible that Trump will insist that the US military play a more visible role in supporting Nigerian military forces in their counterterrorism efforts—perhaps through air strikes, or by having US forces advise and accompany Nigerian forces on missions—to bolster his claims that he is helping Nigerian Christians.
But so many different nonstate actors contribute to Nigeria’s instability that it is hard to identify where the US military would begin. Hundreds of bandit gangs exist across multiple states, and leaders of the country’s main jihadi groups can escape to sanctuaries in neighboring states, most of which have poor relationships with the US. There are plenty of reasons to avoid a serious US military role in Nigeria on these grounds alone.
Further, insisting on a heightened and visible US military posture would face international risk and political resistance within Nigeria. The domestic Nigerian response to Trump’s announcements has been predictably polarizing, reflecting widespread frustrations with the Nigerian government over insecurity as well as religious, ethnic, and partisan divisions. This could actually increase the risk of harm to some Christians, especially as the political climate heats up ahead of 2027 elections in Nigeria. President Trump’s statements have already given rhetorical ammunition to the sorts of Islamist preachers the president seeks to marginalize. Even some opposition figures who are highly critical of the Tinubu government have joined the chorus condemning President Trump’s claimed plans of military action. More worryingly, heavy-handed US involvement runs the risk of disgruntling elements of the armed forces that have long seen themselves as defenders of the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. This should be a serious concern amid a wave of anti-Western “sovereigntist” coups in the neighboring Sahel region. (Worryingly, the Nigerian intelligence agencies recently foiled a coup plot.)
A Negotiating Tactic
The more likely scenario is that Trump is using these threats to exact concessions from the Nigerian government. CNN has reported that the president’s social media posts were spurred by his emotional response to a Fox News segment on attacks against Christians in Nigeria. While his announcements might therefore seem impulsive, one of the anonymous sources CNN interviewed described his reaction as an Art of the Deal–type move to see how the Nigerian government would respond.
This is in keeping with what Trump’s supporters like to claim is his apparently erratic form of policymaking that endows him with unique advantages on the international stage, something akin to the “madman theory” of international relations. The problem in Nigeria is that the government may be unable to achieve significant gains against militants in the near term, even under US pressure. While the Nigerian government can and should do more to tackle insecurity, the militants it faces are numerous, resilient, and adaptive. Their insurgencies are the results of decades of poor governance and neglect that the current administration cannot address overnight.
Moreover, Abuja appears taken aback by the current threats in large part because the Trump administration’s recent messaging on the country’s counterterrorism efforts has been positive. Trump has long supported boosting arms sales to Nigeria despite the concerns of some in Congress about the country’s human rights record. As recently as this August, the Trump administration approved a $346 million weapons sale to Nigeria.
Abuja would no doubt prefer to resolve this impasse by doubling down on existing forms of security assistance—including American arms sales and increased training and intelligence sharing between militaries—couched in the language of mutual counterterrorism efforts. Similarly, Abuja would understandably prefer that the Trump administration expand its focus from specifically Christian victims of violence and emphasize the religiously indiscriminate nature of terrorism.
But the Tinubu administration cannot expect the next steps to be so straightforward. Though it may object to the CPC designation, there is bipartisan skepticism in Congress about the US-Nigeria security relationship. If Abuja wants security assistance to continue, it should be prepared to make reforms to show that it is a serious partner. President Tinubu should begin by appointing an ambassador to Washington, something he should have done months ago. But more importantly, he can demonstrate the political will to implement recommendations from previouscommittees that have investigated the country’s issues. The Tinubu government has been keener than its predecessor to show international partners that it can apprehend top terrorists. It could use this present opportunity to also (a) focus on improving the performance of Nigerian security forces (for example, by curbing the corruption that sometimes leaves Nigerian troops inadequately equipped) and (b) address some of the factors at the roots of the conflict.
Washington, for its part, should understand that these efforts take time and require deft political maneuvering, as they are fraught with potential challenges. But Abuja cannot impress its skeptics in Washington with mere rhetoric and pledges either; it needs to show results sooner rather than later.
Conclusion
In my experience, Nigerians are not naïve about Donald Trump’s governing style—and many appreciate that his bluster can achieve results. If his statements so far prove to be no more than the opening salvo in a series of negotiations on security cooperation and related matters, this episode might not significantly damage US-Nigeria relations. Many of my Nigerian friends and family are indeed hopeful that it might push the Nigerian government to do more to tackle insecurity.
But Washington needs to keep in mind that the impetus for progress ultimately lies with Abuja, as the US has limited room to meaningfully affect the trajectories of Nigeria’s conflicts. Much of the positive influence it can wield in the country might come in the form of less flashy structural support on a longer time horizon (infrastructure development and debt restructuring, for example). Proponents of a muscular military intervention should look at Libya to understand the risks of such an operation—a result that President Trump himself has rightly criticized.