President Donald Trump of the Untied States of America, USA, has threatened military action in Nigeria over ‘killing of Christians’.
Trump had, on Friday, said that Christians in Nigeria are facing an “existential threat,” calling on American lawmakers to investigate “mass slaughter”.
In fact, he named Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” – a State Department designation for nations “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom.”
Reacting, President Bola Tinubu dismissed the description of Nigeria as a nation hostile to religious freedom, insisting that the country remains committed to protecting the rights of citizens of all faiths.
Tinubu said: “Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so. Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”
Read the full response HERE.
Trump’s threat
Making the threat on Saturday, Trump threatened to send US forces into Nigeria with “guns-a-blazing” if Africa’s most populous country does not stem what he described as the killing of Christians by Islamists.
In an explosive post on his Truth Social platform, the Republican leader – who had campaigned unsuccessfully for the Nobel Peace Prize – said he asked the Pentagon to map out a possible plan of attack, one day after warning that Christianity was “facing an existential threat in Nigeria”.
“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 said.
“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians,” he added.
He ended his post with “WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”
Nigeria is embroiled in numerous conflicts that experts say have killed both Christians and Muslims without distinction.
Trump on Friday posted, without evidence, that “thousands of Christians are being killed (and) Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.”
Claims of Christian persecution have also been pushed by some in Nigeria, where ethnic, religious and regional divisions have flared with deadly consequences in the past and still shape the country’s modern politics.
Nigeria is almost evenly divided between a Muslim-majority north and a largely Christian south.
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