President Donald Trump has warned that the United States could carry out additional military strikes in Nigeria if Christians continue to be killed in the country, despite Nigeria’s insistence that there is no systematic persecution of Christians.
Trump issued the warning in an interview with The New York Times, published on Thursday, January 8,2026,while responding to questions about a U.S. military strike conducted in Nigeria on Christmas Day.
At the time, the U.S. military said it had carried out a strike against Islamic State militants in northwest Nigeria at the request of the Nigerian government.
Nigerian authorities said the action was a joint operation aimed at “terrorists” and stressed that it had “nothing to do with a particular religion.”
“I’d love to make it a one-time strike … But if they continue to kill Christians, it will be a many-time strike,” Trump was quoted as saying, according to CNBC
When asked about comments by his own Africa adviser, who had said that Islamic State and Boko Haram militants were killing more Muslims than Christians, Trump acknowledged that Muslims were also being targeted but insisted that Christians were the primary victims.
“I think that Muslims are also being killed in Nigeria. But it’s mostly Christians,” he said.
In late October, Trump began publicly warning that Christianity faces what he described as an “existential threat” in Nigeria, and threatened U.S. military intervention over what he said was the Nigerian government’s failure to stop violence against Christian communities.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with more than 230 million people, is roughly evenly divided between Christians, who largely live in the south, and Muslims, who are concentrated in the north.
Although Nigeria continues to face serious security challenges, including insurgency, banditry, and kidnappings in the north, the government has repeatedly rejected claims of systematic persecution of Christians.
In response to Trump’s earlier statements, Nigerian officials said they were willing to cooperate with Washington in the fight against militants but rejected language suggesting that Christians were uniquely targeted.
Nigerian authorities have consistently maintained that extremist groups have killed both Muslims and Christians, and that the violence is driven by terrorism and criminality rather than religion.
