U.S. President Donald Trump, even as he pursues a Nobel Peace Prize, suggested earlier this month that the U.S. military might go into Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, “guns-a-blazing” to target “Islamic terrorists” committing atrocities against Christians, while instructing what his administration calls the “Department of War” to prepare for possible action. This followed the State Department’s late October designation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, a move the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) welcomed as an important step, having recommended this designation annually since 2009. In response, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu and Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar forcefully rejected the administration’s framing of the periodic violence in their country, asserting that resource-based conflicts have been deliberately distorted to suit narratives of religious persecution. Furthermore, the Nigerian government has explicitly stated that while it welcomes U.S. assistance in targeting insurgents, any action must respect Nigeria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Though violence across Nigeria has certainly increased in recent years, Trump’s threat of military intervention appears to be primarily a performance for his evangelical base overlaid on a multifaceted security crisis. In reality, military intervention would be diplomatically and operationally complex, and would not address the drivers of conflict across the country. On the contrary, it would alienate a key partner and regional hegemon, while forcing the U.S. military to turn its attention to an unproductive mission and accept risk in other parts of the world.
Nigeria’s Security Landscape and Military Capacity
The empirical reality of Nigeria’s security situation is infinitely more complex than the Christian persecution narrative driving recent U.S. policy. Boko Haram and its ISIS-aligned splinter group, the Islamic State-West Africa (ISIS-WA), operate in the northeast, while armed criminal gangs plague Zamfara, Kaduna, and Katsina states in the northwest. The Lakurawa militant group, affiliated with the Islamic State Sahel Province, operates in the border areas of Sokoto and Kebbi states along the country’s frontier with Niger. Farmer-herder conflict destabilizes Benue and Plateau states in the Middle Belt, while a Biafran separatist movement continues to simmer in the southeast. Oil theft persists in the Niger Delta, and piracy and armed robbery at sea periodically threaten the country’s Gulf of Guinea coastline. The geographic and operational breadth of these security challenges has stretched Nigerian security forces to their limits, despite their historic capability to project power across the region.
The narrative of Christian persecution that has drawn the ire of the American president appears to conflate two distinct security issues. In the Middle Belt, farmer-herder conflicts are fundamentally resource-driven disputes between predominantly Muslim Fulani herders seeking grazing land and predominantly Christian farming communities competing for land and water access. These tensions have intensified due to climate change, desertification, and the breakdown of traditional conflict-resolution mechanisms, rather than representing the targeting of specific populations on the basis of religion.
Meanwhile, in the northeast, Boko Haram and ISIS-WA operate as jihadist insurgencies opposed to secular governance, attacking both Muslims and Christians indiscriminately. During the first half of 2025, killings attributed to Boko Haram and ISIS-WA reached their highest level in five years, with fatalities rising by 18 percent year-over-year. Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) repository cited in a recent BBC report estimates that approximately 53,000 civilians across all religious backgrounds have died in targeted political violence since 2009. Of these casualties, between 2020 and September 2025, Christians were specifically targeted in 384 incidents that resulted in 317 deaths, representing a small fraction of total civilian fatalities.
Despite considerable investments in security on the part of the Nigerian government over the past decade, its military has faced shortfalls in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) as well as inadequate logistics and maintenance. This has undermined efforts to hold territory and prevent ISIS-WA’s increasingly sophisticated attacks, which have included the increasing use of commercially-available explosive-rigged drones. The failure of the super camp strategy, implemented in 2019 to consolidate military personnel and equipment into fortified hubs in population centers for security reasons, has instead left garrisons and rural communities vulnerable. Moreover, corruption and poor resource management have compromised critical supply chains. The Abuja-based Center for Democracy and Development estimated in 2022 that approximately $15 billion had been squandered through fraudulent arms procurement deals over the previous two decades.
At the same time, tensions linger between local populations and the military over systematic, widespread crimes against humanity perpetrated during earlier phases of the conflict. Finally, despite more than a decade of counterinsurgency operations, the Nigerian government has failed to address the root causes of the conflict, including the extreme economic inequality between northern and southern Nigeria – instead relying almost exclusively on security-centered responses. Oddly enough, despite its heightened focus on Nigeria in recent weeks, the Trump administration defunded programs earlier this year that focused on early warning, conflict mitigation, and peacebuilding, which all could have helped address the underlying drivers of Nigeria’s multifaceted security challenges.
The Nigerian Christian Persecution Narrative in U.S. Politics
The narrative that Christians are being systematically targeted in Nigeria has been a fixture of U.S. domestic politics for over two decades, beginning when USCIRF first placed Nigeria on its Watch List in 2002. This issue remains deeply important to the electoral coalition that twice delivered the White House to President Trump, who won support from nearly two-thirds of Protestant voters and 55 percent of Catholics in 2024. The first Trump administration designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern in December 2020, which was then reversed by the Biden administration in 2021.
Although the issue had been relatively peripheral to mainstream U.S.-Africa policy, years of sustained congressional focus has included advocacy by Republican Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey (the current chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa) and by former Republican members of Congress including Frank Wolf and Jim Moran, both of Virginia. Meanwhile in Nigeria, select church leaders have leaned into the narrative that Christians are being targeted on the basis of their religion, while many Nigerian legislators have actively resisted this framing, emphasizing that violence affects both Christians and Muslims without sectarian distinction.
Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican chairing the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy, introduced the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025 (S.2747) in September, which has a companion bill (H.R.5808) in the House of Representatives introduced by Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) in October. Both bills would require the secretary of state to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (now done, as noted above, without the legislation – see below) and to designate Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa as Entities of Particular Concern. The bills also would require the president to impose targeted sanctions under Executive Order 13818 on Nigerian officials who have “enforced blasphemy laws, including through prosecution, conviction, imprisonment, or other deprivation of liberty of individuals pursuant to such laws.”
Both S.2747 and H.R.5808 would codify the CPC designation in law, preventing future administrations from reversing it without congressional action. However, neither has cosponsors, indicating they function primarily as messaging to domestic constituencies and to garner favor with Trump rather than as serious legislative vehicles that have a chance at making it to his desk. Both bills face uncertain prospects and would require additional cosponsors and prioritization by committee chairs before advancing to committee action and then to floor votes. Two additional measures more recently introduced by Smith (H.Res.860) and Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) (H.Res.866) in early November commend the president for redesignating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern and, as resolutions rather than bills, are also symbolic measures that have no legal impact.
Diplomatic Disconnect
The diplomacy on this issue has also been complicated at both ends. For Nigeria’s part, it lacks accredited diplomatic leadership in Washington, due to President Tinubu’s decision to recall all Nigerian envoys worldwide in September 2023 for what was described as a reorganization of the country’s diplomatic corps. Furthermore, since taking office in May 2023, Tinubu has not visited the U.S. capital. However, enhanced diplomatic engagement may have offered only marginal opportunities to pre-empt or de-escalate diplomatic tensions. In this respect, Trump’s allegations of Christian persecution in Nigeria mirror the debunked conspiracy theory he and others on the American right continue to wield against South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) that there is a “genocide” of white farmers in their country.
Indeed, this pattern of championing selective narratives while dismissing broader evidence offers a cautionary lesson: there is minimal return on investment in persuading the president and his inner circle with facts once they have acquired their own ideologically entrenched truths. Notably, even after several months of diplomatic outreach and lobbying, including an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa, the U.S. president recently declared that no U.S. government officials would be attending the G20 in South Africa – and that the country should not even be a member of the G20.
U.S. Military Options: Flight of Fancy?
In response to the Trump administration’s directive to develop military options, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has proposed a range of approaches, each constrained by distinct diplomatic, strategic, and operational considerations. AFRICOM was originally created as — and largely continues to be — a ‘posture-limited theater,’ with a limited forward military presence and drawing on only 0.3 percent of the Department of Defense’s operating budget, according to the congressional testimony of previous combatant commanders. The command’s annual posture statements identify Nigeria as central to counterterrorism strategy in West Africa, prioritizing the containment and degradation of Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa through an approach intended to let African partners lead, with the United States and allies providing enabling support, rather than the United States engaging directly in combat operations. The backbone of bilateral engagement has been episodic training to build the capacity of the Nigerian military and associated institutions and robust foreign military sales, which has included the delivery of 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft in 2021 and substantial munitions packages, such as a $346 million precision-guided weapons sale approved this August. Regionally, Nigeria has participated in annual multinational exercises such as Flintlock, which is focused on joint special operations, and Obangame Express, which is billed as the “largest multinational maritime exercise in Western and Central Africa.” The U.S. military also provides advisors, training, equipment, and intelligence-sharing, to the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a five-nation regional security mechanism comprising forces from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger (until withdrawing earlier this year), and Nigeria.
The first option presented by AFRICOM, deepening “partner-enabled operations” with Nigerian security forces, essentially represents an intensification of the bilateral security cooperation already underway, which has not resolved longstanding conflicts across the country. Moreover, longstanding legal restrictions under the Leahy Law, which prohibits assistance to security forces that have perpetrated human rights abuses, have rightfully put guardrails on the bilateral security relationship for more than a decade. Lastly, the evisceration of the foreign assistance apparatus means that bureaus like the State Department’s Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in the former U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration shut down, are no longer working to address the root causes of insecurity in the country. Those efforts ordinarily would work hand-in-glove with military- and law-enforcement responses.
A second option that AFRICOM floated would involve drone strikes on militant camps and convoys launched from bases in southern Europe (presumably Morón air base in Spain or Sigonella in Italy) or Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, which serves as AFRICOM’s only permanent military installation on the African continent. Operating from any of these locations would require roughly eight hours of transit for an armed MQ-9 Reaper, leaving approximately 10 hours on-station time. While this duration would permit extended surveillance of militant camps and convoys and enable multiple strikes, it would prove insufficient for sustained counterterrorism operations. Furthermore, such operations would require overflight authorizations from multiple countries across the continent; yet, given the Nigerian government’s concerns about sovereignty and territorial integrity, unilateral drone strikes from foreign bases would be diplomatically untenable for the region absent their consent. Nigeria’s possession of its own strike-capable aircraft, including the 12 A-29 Super Tucanos delivered in 2021, means Abuja would likely demand operational control over any targeting decisions rather than ceding sovereignty to U.S.-directed strikes from abroad. More importantly, such operations would divert MQ-9 assets already committed to counterterrorism missions against al-Shabaab and ISIS-Somalia, assessed as higher-priority threats to U.S. national security interests.
The third option AFRICOM presented would be to deploy an aircraft carrier group in the Gulf of Guinea that would enable fighter jets and long-range bombers to conduct airstrikes into northern Nigeria. One immediate limitation of this option is that the United States possesses 11 aircraft carriers, usually allocated between theaters deemed to be national security priorities to the United States – such as U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in the Middle East– with the remainder undergoing scheduled maintenance or training cycles. Additionally, U.S. officials have indicated that the 2025 National Defense Strategy will prioritize homeland defense and the Western Hemisphere, thus implying that operations in other theaters, including counterterrorism in the AFRICOM area of responsibility, will be deprioritized. With the USS Gerald R. Ford rerouted from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean for what the administration describes as counter-narcotics operations, and the other currently-deployed carriers in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility, deploying a carrier strike group to the Gulf of Guinea would require the U.S. military to accept risk in the CENTCOM and INDOPACOM areas, leaving the United States more vulnerable to opportunistic challenges from adversarial actors and peer competitors. One way to buy down risk in this scenario could be to deploy submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, which would enable strikes throughout northeastern Nigeria from international waters without diverting carrier groups or requiring forward basing.
Beyond the strategic, operational, and tactical constraints of these options is the question of the legal framework that would theoretically enable military action in Nigeria – most likely the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) or the president’s inherent Article II constitutional powers as Commander-in-Chief to conduct limited military operations without explicit congressional authorization, as modern presidents have done frequently. In any event, the president’s stated justification for military action in Nigeria stretches the conceptual limits of both authorities, as the protection of Christians is neither counterterrorism nor directly linked to a national security threat to the United States. Nonetheless, the administration’s approach to foreign assistance, immigration enforcement, and tariffs would seem to suggest that it views legal limitations as mere suggestions.
The Illusion of Impact
Ultimately, Trump’s threatened military action appears more as political theater choreographed for his domestic base, akin to deploying the National Guard to American cities. Whatever response the administration settles on in this case is highly unlikely to improve the plight of Nigerian civilians, including Christians, due to the structural governance, economic, and security drivers of conflict across the country. Much like other countries that have found themselves in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, Nigeria will discover that this disconnect is something that will need to be carefully managed – and unlikely to be resolved — for the duration of Trump’s tenure. In other words, increased diplomatic engagement and lobbying will not hurt, but ultimately is not likely to resolve this impasse in the bilateral relationship.
Working in Nigeria’s favor is that it is one of Africa’s largest economies, and can fortify relationships with other countries, should U.S. influence wither. The Trump administration’s decision to gut foreign assistance and bully a State that possesses regional clout simply accelerates this pivot, undermining American strategic interests on the continent while expanding the influence of competitors at minimal cost.
