US President Donald Trump was traveling when he caught a programme on his favourite Fox News about the targeting of Christians in Nigeria by Islamic terrorist groups.
CNN reports, “The president was ‘immediately’ angered by it, one of the sources said, and asked to be further read in on the issue.
Shortly after Air Force One touched down in West Palm Beach, he began posting on his Truth Social medium.”
On November 1, Trump started a series of posts.
The first post read: “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.
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! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”
Shortly after, his lackey and Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, echoed, “The killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria—and anywhere—must end immediately. 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.”
It seemed what had been developing over many months eventually got to the White House.
Weeks before, right-wing Republican Senator Ted Cruz had asked the US Senate to consider a sanction on Nigeria for alleged genocidal attacks on Nigerian Christians by Islamic groups.
Unrelenting, Trump continued with his outbursts on his Truth Social days later. He wrote: “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening there, and in numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian Population around the World!”
The Nigerian government’s failures are real. Its security forces are underfunded, poorly trained, and sometimes complicit in the violence they are meant to prevent
The US leader quickly completed his thoughts with a terse and loud: “WARNING: The Nigerian Government better move fast to stop the killing of Christians!”
These are not ordinary dramatic or diplomatic outbursts.
They represent something unprecedented in American foreign policy – a direct threat of military intervention predicated explicitly on the religious identity of victims in a sovereign nation’s internal conflicts.
To understand the gravity of this moment, we must hold up a mirror to America’s own past.
The United States was forged in the crucible of religious persecution, built by Puritans fleeing the established churches of Europe, shaped by Roger Williams’s radical vision of a “wall of separation” between church and state.
The US Constitution First Amendment’s opening words – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”- were not mere poetry but hard-won wisdom purchased with centuries of European blood spilled in wars of religion.
This constitutional firewall exists precisely to prevent what Trump now threatens: the deployment of state power to advance sectarian religious interests.
When President John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797, the document explicitly stated that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” This was not controversial then; it was foundational.
Yet, here we stand in 2025, watching an American administration prepare to wage war – and make no mistake, that is what military intervention means – on explicitly religious grounds.
Not to protect American citizens.
Not to defend treaty obligations.
Not even under the broad humanitarian umbrellas that have justified past interventions. But to “save our great Christian brothers and sisters” in Nigeria.
The cognitive dissonance should be deafening.
If Trump proceeds, historians may mark this moment as the end of something important: the end of America’s claim to stand for universal principles rather than sectarian loyalties, the end of the post-Westphalian order, the end of the distinction between humanitarian intervention and holy war
Nigeria’s crisis is real, but it defies the neat theological categories Trump’s administration has imposed.
The violence in the Middle Belt and northern states emerges from a toxic convergence of climate change, desertification, farmer-herder competition for shrinking resources, state collapse, insurgency, banditry, and yes, religious tension.
But to call it simply “the killing of Christians” is to mistake a symptom for the disease, a convenient narrative for uncomfortable reality.
Boko Haram and its offshoots have indeed targeted Christians with horrific violence.
They have also slaughtered Muslims by the thousands, destroyed mosques, assassinated imams, and declared most Nigerian Muslims apostates worthy of death.
This is not to diminish the suffering of Christians, which is profound and demands attention.
Terrorists have attacked Christian worshippers and murdered Christians across various Nigerian communities.
But the perpetrators do not narrow down on Christians. Theirs is a war aimed at economic and political gains, not strictly religion.
Even if one accepts that Nigeria’s Christian population faces existential threat—a claim the facts do not support—American intervention would violate a dense thicket of domestic and international law
For this reason, American policy has to be grounded in reality rather than in the fundraising narratives of American evangelical organizations and their Nigerian religious, political and ethnic conspirators.
Nigeria poses no threat to American security. It has not attacked the United States or its allies.
It is not harbouring anti-American terrorists; indeed, Nigerian forces have been America’s partners in counterterrorism operations across West Africa.
The sole justification offered is religious identity.
Consider the precedent this establishes.
If the United States may intervene militarily to protect Christians in Nigeria, may Saudi Arabia intervene to protect Muslims in Myanmar?
May China intervene to protect Confucians or Buddhists in neighbouring countries?
May India, under a Hindu nationalist government, intervene to protect Hindus in Pakistan?
May Russia—which has already used the pretext of protecting Russian speakers abroad—intervene to protect Orthodox Christians anywhere in the former Soviet space?
The Trump administration appears not to have considered, or not to care, that it is handing every authoritarian regime on earth a licence to shred the prohibition on military aggression.
Strip away the religious rhetoric, and other motivations emerge.
One need not be conspiratorial to notice that Trump’s religious rhetoric arrives accompanied by material interests.
Donald Trump has just been given a red nose by China in his global trade war, realising he lacked the ace card to win when China had cornered most of the world’s rare earth minerals.
In a pitiable spectacle of himself, he jetted to China for a long handshake with his foe, Xi Jinping.
Trump bowed.
Nigeria has significant reserves of rare earth minerals and is a potential producer actively attracting investment for mineral processing in lithium—an essential mineral for the production of electric batteries for EV autos—tin, columbite, and tantalum, which are found in states like Nasarawa, Kogi, and Benue.
Nigeria is known to have projects underway to build rare earth processing plants and become a major player in the global market.
We have seen Trump grab Ukraine by the balls for its vast reserves of rare minerals, followed by his intervention in the Rwanda-Congo skirmishes, in order to ostensibly control export routes for mineral resources in Congo.
Only recently, the US signed an agreement with Australia on rare earth minerals to reduce its reliance on China after its attempt to force its way through the imposition of tariffs failed.
So, it is plausible to suspect that the Trump administration is making false claims in order to get what it wants in Nigeria.
Some even think what the US wants is Nigeria’s oil. While that may be true, it makes little sense. The US has more oil than any other country.
Is it mere coincidence that America’s attention to Nigeria has sharpened precisely as China deepens its commercial engagement across Africa?
Likely not!
That the proposed military intervention would place American forces in a strategically significant nation that has, until now, balanced its relationships between Washington and Beijing is a scenario that makes sense.
Even if one accepts that Nigeria’s Christian population faces existential threat—a claim the facts do not support—American intervention would violate a dense thicket of domestic and international law.
The US War Powers Resolution requires congressional authorization for military operations lasting more than sixty days.
No such authorisation has been sought, much less granted. Internationally, intervention without Security Council authorization would violate the UN Charter.
Perhaps most troubling is the Trump administration’s weaponization of Christian identity for political ends.
American evangelical organisations have indeed prodded their Nigerian allies to raise alarms about persecution in Nigeria, but many Nigerian Christian leaders have responded with notable ambivalence or outright opposition to American military intervention.
The Nigerian government, for all its manifest failures in providing security, retains legitimacy among most Nigerians, including Christians.
An American invasion predicated on the claim that Nigeria is engaged in Christian genocide would be perceived, accurately, as a neo-colonial assault—and would likely unite Nigerians of all faiths in opposition.
Trump’s “hallelujah singers” are not primarily concerned with Nigerian welfare.
They are concerned with American evangelical political power, with fundraising, with maintaining the narrative of a global war on Christianity that justifies their institutional existence.
The Nigerian government’s failures are real. Its security forces are underfunded, poorly trained, and sometimes complicit in the violence they are meant to prevent.
Corruption siphons resources from counterterrorism and rural security. Political leaders exploit ethnic and religious divisions.
These problems demand attention and accountability.
But American military intervention would not solve these problems; it would compound them.
It would transform local conflicts into international ones, replace Nigerian ownership of security solutions with American occupation, and set precedents that would destabilize the international order for generations.
Most fundamentally, it would betray America’s own foundational principles. The United States was created, in part, to escape the religious wars of Europe.
Its Constitution was designed to prevent the government from ever again sending armies to fight in God’s name.
President Trump now proposes to break this foundation.
He proposes to make the United States the first major power since the Peace of Westphalia to wage war explicitly for sectarian religious purposes.
He proposes to transform America from a constitutional republic into a crusader state.
The tragedy is not merely what this would do to Nigeria.
The tragedy is what it would do to America – and to the international order that has, despite all its flaws, prevented a return to the religious wars that once consumed continents.
If Trump proceeds, historians may mark this moment as the end of something important: the end of America’s claim to stand for universal principles rather than sectarian loyalties, the end of the post-Westphalian order, the end of the distinction between humanitarian intervention and holy war.
That would be a hallelujah no thinking Christian should sing.