Nigeria's Jihad: Only a problem if you try to take action to stop it? Really?

should not be Just a "Trump Issue"

The persecution of Christians just does not stop, and if you know your theology, it won't stop.

The latest example is this:

Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday that he had instructed the US Department of War to prepare for “possible action”.

And on Sunday, Trump reiterated that his country could deploy troops to Nigeria or carry out airstrikes to stop the alleged killings.

“They’re killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria. They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen,” the US president said.

In Saturday’s post he warned that he might send the military into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” unless the Nigerian government intervened, and said that all aid to what he called “the now disgraced country” would be cut.

Trump had said: “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth then replied to the post by writing: “Yes sir.

“The Department of War is preparing for action. Either the Nigerian Government protects Christians, or we will kill the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”

The horror of what is going on in Nigeria right now is not something that President Trump pulled out of the ether. It has come up on a regular basis at my OG Blog for a couple of decades, but came into most people’s scan during President Obama’s term 11 years ago.

The “international community” has been appreciating this problem, while doing nothing—watching yet another chapter unfold that has repeated in Africa over and over on the bleeding edge of Islam in Africa the last 1,300 years.

As a not insignificant portion of the official commentary gets unhinged and reactively biased once President Trump enters any arena, let’s go back to the Biden Administration to see what was being discussed.

From Heritage in 2023;

“If we keep quiet, we are going to go extinct,” says Catholic Bishop Chipa Wilfred Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi in Benue state, Nigeria.

In June, the Congressional Values Action Team caucus met with Anagbe and the Rev. Remigius Ihyula who shared their testimonies of atrocities committed against Christians in Nigeria by Islamic extremists and about the complacency of the Nigerian government.

The meeting rallied support behind House Resolution 82, introduced by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., expressing the sense of Congress that the Biden administration officially redesignate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern for grossly violating religious freedoms and appoint a special envoy for Nigeria and the Lake Chad region.”

An estimated 5,621 Christians worldwide were killed for their faith last year. Of those, 90% were Nigerian, according to a January report by Open Doors International, a nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of persecuted Christians. The report says, “Militant groups such as Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province, and other Fulani militants inflict murder, physical injury, abduction and sexual violence on their victims.”

Western media commonly frames the violence in Nigeria as a “herder-farmer” conflict “propelled by climate change and resource scarcity,” despite U.S. government reports that “one of ISIS’s largest and most powerful regional branches … controls broad swaths of territory and has killed or displaced thousands of people in Nigeria and neighboring countries.”

Records show Fulani militants attacking Christian communities, burning churches, summarily killing schoolchildren, kidnapping priests for ransom, and often executing them. Twelve Nigerian state governments officially adhere to Islamic Sharia law, “contributing to discrimination and violence against Christians,” according to International Christian Concern.

From Vatican News in 2023;

Over 50,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since the outbreak of the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in 2009, a newly-released report published by a Nigerian non-governmental organization has revealed.

The report, titled “Martyred Christians in Nigeria”, has been published by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), a Nigerian-based research and investigative rights group, which has been monitoring and investigating religious persecution and other forms of religious violence by State and non-State actors across Nigeria since 2010.

52,250 Nigerian Christians murdered since 2009

According to its findings, over the past 14 years at least 52,250 Nigerian Christians have been brutally murdered at the hands of Islamist militants, more than 30,000 of whom during the eight-year presidency of former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, often criticized during his tenure for not doing enough to combat growing insecurity in the country.

18,000 churches set on fire

In the same period 18,000 Christian churches and 2,200 Christian schools were set ablaze. Approximately 34,000 moderate Muslims also died in Islamist attacks.

From a February, 2024 UK House of Commons debate;

ORFA also notes that there was a “significant 54% decrease” in the number of attacks targeting communities (villages, neighbourhoods for example) with fatalities in Q2 2023 compared to Q2 2022. However, there was a 4% increase in other attacks (during worship, on the road or farms).

According to ORFA, between April and June 2023 there were:

1. 1,637 recorded deaths of Christians

2. 642 Christians abducted

3. 119 attacks on communities with fatalities

4. 511 other attacks

In its 2022 submission to the Human Rights Council, ORFA states “violence is escalating, spreading, and the actors are diversifying.” It also says that Christians are “disproportionately affected to the extent that we can suggest there may be deliberate targeting”.

…

There are more than 100 million Christians in Nigeria, out of a population of 216 million, according to a detailed country profile of Nigeria [PDF] compiled by Open Doors. Although Nigeria is often thought to be divided into a predominantly Christian south and a predominantly Muslim north, Open Doors cautions many Christians live in the north, particularly the north-central region. Open Doors says persecution and discrimination are strongest in the three northern geo-political zones.

…

In December 2023, the news agency Reuters said that violence in the central region is the “worst since 2018.” It notes that violence is often characterised as ethno-religious – chiefly Muslim Fulani herdsmen clashing with mainly Christian farmers. However, Reuters also cautions that conflict may be more about the availability of resources rather than ethnic or religious differences, with climate change among a range of factors creating competition for land, pushing farmers and herders into conflict:

Of course the usual suspects would tend to downplay the religious aspects, as that might cause uncomfortable follow-on questions, but we know what is going on.

Now lets go back to the post-President Trump statement and bring us back to today.

This is a priority for this administration, and should be for everyone.

From our Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz on 18 November,

AMBASSADOR MIKE WALTZ: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for everyone who has joined us today. And for a number of our ambassadors and delegates who have joined us, thank you for coming. To our faith leaders, survivors of some of these atrocities, and what I would call everyone here a friend of freedom, welcome to the United States Mission to the United Nations.

And today we speak of blood. We speak of the blood that still cries from Nigerian soil. This is deeply personal for me, as I know it is for Ms. Minaj and her pastor here, Peters Adonu, and others. I had the opportunity to serve in Nigeria in 2015, if you remember when then 300 little girls were kidnapped from their schools, ripped out of their homes and schools in the middle of the day, and in the middle of the night.

We sent a small team over there, and we trained – Nigeria’s equivalent of their Navy SEALs – to go get those girls back. It was righteous work. We didn’t get them all back, unfortunately, but we got some. Some will be lost forever. And if you remember the infamous save the girls campaign, that was 10 years ago. Folks, it’s still happening. It just happened yesterday. 25 little girls were ripped out of their school. I pray that we get them back. But what often happens is they’re sold into sex slavery. They’re forced to renounce their religion. They never see their homes or families again, and they literally disappear to the dark underbelly of extremism and sex slavery.

Look, 10 years later, the horror continues in the middle belt and in the north. Churches burn, mothers bury their children for the crime of singing Amazing Grace. Pastors have been beheaded. Pastors have been beheaded for preaching the Sermon on the Mountain, entire villages wake up to gunfire, because they dare to commit the crime, the crime of calling Jesus their Lord. People go to jail under blasphemy laws for simply wearing a cross. This is not random violence. This is genocide, wearing the mask of chaos.

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation and a vibrant mosaic of cultures and faiths, but it is under siege. And in the northern region, you have 12 Muslim majority states that are enforcing Sharia law and have enforced it since 1999. Jihadi groups like Boko Haram and the Fulani militias continue to unleash targeted violence. It is targeted. It is specific, on these Christian communities.

Now that you have a serious administration taking the problem seriously, the snakes are coming out of the woodwork who want to downplay what is happening. Some for nationalistic reasons, some because they are scared of action on anything, some because Orange Man Bad, and others because, well, we can’t make Muslims look bad, even if they are slaughtering Christians.

Oh, and don’t forget the kidnapping. On Friday, the latest horror took place that we are reliably told is not taking place.

More than 300 children and staff are now thought to have been kidnapped by gunmen from a Catholic school in central Nigeria, making it one of the worst mass abductions the country has seen.

The Christian Association of Nigeria said 303 students and 12 teachers were taken from St Mary’s School in Papiri, Niger state - substantially more than previously estimated.

It said the figures have been revised upwards “after a verification exercise”.

The kidnapping comes amid a surge of attacks by armed groups. The revised number of people taken surpasses the 276 abducted during the infamous Chibok mass abduction of 2014.

Local police said armed men stormed the school at around 02:00 local time (01:00 GMT) on Friday morning, abducting students who were staying there.

Dominic Adamu, whose daughters attend the school but were not taken, told the BBC: “Everybody is weak... it took everybody by surprise.”

One distressed woman tearfully told the BBC that her nieces, aged six and 13, had been kidnapped, adding: “I just want them to come home.”

Police said that security agencies were “combing the forests with a view to rescue the abducted students”.

All schools in Niger state were ordered on Saturday to close in response to the kidnapping.

You also have the inability of the Nigerian government to be honest about what is happening in their own nation, their failure to provide security to their own people, and as you see in much of the world—their disarming of the people so they cannot protect themselves when the government isn’t there.

As we have seen elsewhere, people will deny the religious aspects of this until the Christian population disappears through migration, conversion, or death.

You know, the 1,300-year pattern.

A classic example of this is via Gimba Kakanda, Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on Research and Analytics in the Office of the Vice President, in, of course, Al Jazeera;

Christians have suffered tragic losses, but so have Muslims, and often on an even greater scale. This is the story President Tinubu is rewriting. Nowhere is there an official policy or plan to eradicate Christians. Nigeria’s conflicts are grim and complex, but they centre on terrorism, crime and communal disputes, not religion. Terror groups kill opportunistically, striking churches, mosques, markets and villages alike. As the Tinubu-led government has stressed, no Nigerian is targeted by the state because of their faith.

Note the last part, “…by the state…”. He is not as clever as he thinks. The world knows what is happening.

In recent days, coordinated attacks on Nigeria’s nationhood have swept across social media, blogs and television outlets, alleging a so-called “Christian genocide”. These attacks, driven by foreign actors, mischaracterise Nigeria’s domestic conflicts, ignore its complexities and manipulate longstanding ethnic and resource-based tensions to advance sectarian agendas.

One of the figures driving this propaganda is American comedian and television host Bill Maher, who used his show to deliver a sensationalised account alleging the systematic slaughter of Christians in Nigeria. “I’m not a Christian, but they are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria. They’ve killed over 100,000 since 2009. They’ve burned 18,000 churches. These are the Islamists, Boko Haram,” he said. “This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country.” His sources are largely fabricated claims and manipulated images from unverified outlets. These distorted narratives drew applause from his audience, while Fox News, true to form, amplified them.

Amazing. Also, get a look at this hard pivot;

This misinformation – aimed at maligning Nigeria as much as undermining the gravity of the situation in Gaza – is linked to Nigeria’s position at the 2025 United Nations General Assembly. By reaffirming support for a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, Nigeria challenged powerful interests invested in one-sided narratives.

Oh, it must be the Jews then. And yes, there is the issue with the President of Nigeria being Muslim himself. And no, the fact his wife is a Christian does not remove this as an issue. Mohammed had Christian “wives” too…no, wait, they converted after their enslavement.

Enough of that. Let’s check in with CNN’s Nimi Princewill;

Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a crisis-monitoring group, reported that more than 20,400 civilians were killed in attacks in Nigeria between January 2020 and September of this year. Among those casualties, 317 deaths were attributed to attacks targeting Christians, while 417 deaths were reported among Muslims, though the organization did not include the religious affiliation of the vast majority of the civilians killed.

Security analyst Nnamdi Obasi, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group think tank, explained that while extremist groups have wreaked havoc against both Christians and Muslims in the northeast of Nigeria, bandit groups have terrorized predominantly Muslim communities in the northwest. Additionally, predominantly Christian farming communities in parts of the North Central zone have suffered persistent violence from armed groups.

However, “in most parts of the country, Christians and Muslims live peacefully with each other,” he said. “Reports of widespread persecution and mass slaughter of Christians are seriously misread and exaggerate the challenges of interfaith relations in the country.”

Ken Eluma Asogwa, a spokesperson for the opposition Labour Party, told CNN that “even though the government of Nigeria has been lackluster and shambolic in its approach to the protection of its citizens from murderous non-state actors operating under different aliases, there is no evidence to support Trump’s claims that Christians are particularly targeted for extermination.”

On Friday, Trump designated Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” under the US International Religious Freedom Act. The label is a suggestion that his administration has found that Nigeria has engaged in or tolerated “systematic, ongoing, (and) egregious violations of religious freedom.”

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has so far remained silent about Trump’s mention of potential military intervention but pushed back against the designation, stating in a social media post that “the characterization 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.”

Ummm, what about the other 19,666? If you believe those numbers, there are a few people in Nigeria who would like to talk to you about letting them store some money in your bank account for a great interest payment to you for the bother.

Yes, Christians and Muslims get along fine…in majority Christian parts of the country. Yes, the most radical Muslims attack the less radical Muslims as well…but that isn’t where the real concfict is taking place.

From the same BBC article quoted above, you have this:

Trump did not say which killings he was referring to, but claims of a genocide against Nigeria’s Christians have been circulating in recent weeks and months in some right-wing US circles.

Groups monitoring violence say there is no evidence to suggest that Christians are being killed more than Muslims in Nigeria, which is roughly evenly divided between followers of the two religions.

No evidence…do they not read the pre-2024 BBC…or any of the other sources going back over a decade?

So, before President Trump came into office and brought up the issue, the targeted killing and kidnapping of Christians in Nigeria was a big problem, but now that he has raised the issue, it isn’t one? Amazing thing to see once you’re looking for it.

As for war involving the USA, no. we are not going to war in Nigeria. Too big and too messy. We might do some strikes, but not war. I think Pastor Bwala has it about right;

Trump’s threat triggered alarm across Nigeria. Many on social media urged the government to step up its fight against Islamist groups to avert a situation where foreign troops are sent into the country.

But Mr Bwala, who said he was a Christian pastor, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that Trump had a “unique way of communicating” and that Nigeria was not taking his words literally.

“We know the heart and intent of Trump is to help us fight insecurity,” he said, adding that he hoped Trump would meet Tinubu in the coming days to discuss the issue.

Nigeria is not going to be fixed by the US military. The US military can help Nigeria fix itself, if it wants to.

What the rest of the world needs to do is to state clearly, without hedging, exactly what is going on in Nigeria.

Starting with the truth is always a strong state. Starting to act at root causes? That is a bit harder. The key to this is to get the Nigerian government to take the issue seriously and for competent nations to help them do a better job. If present trends continue, the problem will only continue to spread south, and with it the death, kidnapping, rape, torture, poverty, misery, and migration that comes with it.

You may not be interested in the conquest of Dar al-Harb, but the conquest of Dar al-Harb is interested in you.

Always has, always will.