President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to deploy U.S. forces to Nigeria with “guns-a-blazing” if the West African nation fails to halt what he described as the killing of Christians by Islamist extremists.
In a fiery post on his Truth Social account, the Republican leader — who previously sought the Nobel Peace Prize — revealed that he had directed the Pentagon to draft a potential plan of attack, a day after claiming that Christianity faced “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 concluded his post with a warning: “WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”
Nigeria continues to grapple with multiple security crises that analysts say claim the lives of both Christians and Muslims alike.
On Friday, Trump had posted — without providing evidence — that “thousands of Christians are being killed (and) Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.”
Allegations of Christian persecution have also been amplified by some groups within Nigeria, where long-standing ethnic, religious, and regional tensions have repeatedly resulted in deadly conflicts and still influence the nation’s political landscape.
Nigeria remains almost evenly split between a Muslim-majority north and a predominantly Christian south.
AFP
