U.S. President Donald J. Trump has publicly acknowledged that Muslims are also victims of deadly violence in Nigeria, even as he maintained that Christians constitute the majority of those killed, comments that have drawn sharp rebuttals from Nigerian critics who call the “Christian genocide” narrative a political construct.
The remarks came during a January 8, 2026 interview with The New York Times, released on the newspaper’s website, where Trump was pressed on recent U.S. military engagement in Nigeria and broader questions about religious violence in the West African nation.
“I think that Muslims are being killed also in Nigeria. But it’s mostly Christians,” Trump said in the interview when asked about the complex pattern of violence affecting civilians across Nigeria.
The U.S. leader’s comments come in the wake of U.S. military operations in Nigeria, including a Christmas Day 2025 airstrike targeting Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) militants in Sokoto State, an operation that Washington and Abuja described as jointly aimed at degrading jihadi capabilities rather than targeting any religious group.
Trump has long amplified claims that Christians in Nigeria face a concerted campaign of persecution, warning that continued attacks could prompt additional U.S. action. In the same interview, he reiterated that more U.S. military strikes could follow if Nigeria “continues to kill Christians,” words that resonated with segments of U.S. political circles and conservative media.
Those assertions have deepened debate over how the violence in Nigeria, driven largely by Islamist insurgents, banditry, and communal conflicts, is framed internationally. Critics argue that such framing oversimplifies the crisis.
Reacting swiftly to Trump’s comments on X (formerly Twitter) on January 9, 2026, Nigerian activist and former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore dismissed the Christian genocide narrative as a political ruse designed to justify foreign military intervention and serve other interests.
“Emperor @realDonaldTrump wakes up, intoxicated by U.S. military power…the narrative used to justify it is secondary; even then, it only needs to match the gullibility of the intended audience,” Sowore wrote.
Sowore further criticised Trump’s moral credibility, asserting: “The truth is that @realDonaldTrump does not serve the God of the Christian Bible.…He loves only himself and his account balance. Everything else is theatre.”
Nigeria’s security landscape remains dire, with militant Islamist groups like Boko Haram and ISWAP responsible for decades of violence affecting civilians regardless of religion, as well as government forces and local communities. Independent research indicates that extremist violence has killed Muslims and Christians alike in overlapping patterns, and that targeting on explicitly religious grounds is not clearly supported by broad datasets.
Analysts warn that inflated or one-sided narratives can distort understanding of complex conflict dynamics, potentially exacerbating tensions between communities and complicating efforts to build peace on the ground.
Meanwhile, Nigerian officials have repeatedly rejected characterisations of a targeted “Christian genocide,” emphasizing instead that terrorist violence is indiscriminate and affects all citizens irrespective of faith, a position echoed by regional bodies such as the African Union Commission, which has said there is “no genocide in northern Nigeria.”
